Research/Extension/Training: Strengthening Local Development in the Highlands and High Rainforest Areas Projec

General

The purpose of the project is to contribute to rural poverty reduction in the areas of intervention. Its development objective is to deepen the effectiveness, efficiency and relevance of public investments from central, regional and local governments to improve the well-being of the rural population and increase the value of their natural, physical, human, social and financial assets.Specific objectives include:(a) Strengthening the capabilities and skills of groups and associations of poor rural people to participate fully in local development and increase productivity and competitiveness, including full access to citizenship; (b) Transferring funds to groups of organized rural families and associations of rural men and women to enable them to competitively: (i) improve their natural resources and human settlements; (ii) access grant funding to carry out profitable business ventures in a wide range of initiatives; and (iii) mobilize savings and provide access to microinsurance, especially for rural women; (c) Improving the management capacity of local governments to meet the relevant demand of poor rural people, in order to promote self-development and leverage resources available to municipalities working with the project; (d) Strengthening the institutional capacity of the implementing agency to: deepen a territorial and micro watershed approach; mobilize additional private investment to complement project investments adequately; implement an intercultural approach; institute monitoring and evaluation (M&E) mechanisms; introduce a gender dimension into its projects; and further strengthen its operational capacity at the district level.The project is in compliance with IFAD policies on: (i) targeting, by focusing activities on poor rural people; (ii) gender, through positive discrimination measures and capacity-building of women's groups; (iii) middle-income countries (MICs), by building knowledge management and supporting South-South cooperation; (iv) rural finance, by supporting access to banking services and building financial assets; (v) rural enterprise, by reducing the limitations and inequities facing poor rural people in investing in small- and medium-sizedenterprises; (vi) indigenous peoples, by assisting communities in fully exploiting their traditional knowledge, culture, governance systems and natural resources; (vii) land, by respecting the land interests of rural people and promoting participatory land-use planning and management at the local level; (viii) private sectordevelopment, by strengthening the capacity of poor rural people and their organizations to deal with new market forces and partner with the private sector on fair and equitable conditions; and (ix) climate change, by furthering the use of climate analysis as an instrument of social and environmental assessment to seekmeasures to reduce or eliminate risks.