FONDO MINK'A DE CHORLAVÍ

Documento en Word
Documento en PDF

"The role of local governments and decentralization in the strengthening of strategies to permit to revalue poor and marginalized rural territories: partnership experiences between local or municipal governments"

Grupo Chorlav� calls public and private organizations interested in the rural problems of Latin America to participate in the Mink'a de Chorlav� Fund Contest within the framework of its 2005 Social Learning Cycle. The contest subject -corresponding to the learning cycle subject- is: "The role of local governments and decentralization in the strengthening of strategies to permit to revalue poor and marginalized rural territories: partnership experiences between local or municipal governments". The Fund will allocate an approximate sum of US$ 175,000 for this contest to be distributed among 10 to 12 projects. For more information, please visit www.grupochorlavi.org or write to rimisp@rimisp.org.

GRUPO CHORLAVÍ
1.Grupo Chorlav� is an interactive network seeking to stimulate and facilitate social learning decentralized processes aimed at enriching quality and at leveraging the effectiveness of the initiatives that transform rural societies in Latin America and the Caribbean, in connection with a defined and limited topical sustainable rural development agenda. Grupo Chorlav� is an initiative supported by the International Cooperation Church Organization (ICCO) from the Netherlands and the International Development Research Center (IDRC) from Canada. Rimisp is the Executive Secretariat of Grupo Chorlav�.

2. The Group's work is organized on "Social Learning Projects" , consisting in a set of systematization, critical reflection, dialog, communication and documentation activities, among others, which, through a systematic, analytic and comprehensive process must be focused in a concrete subject, and within it, in learning questions and objectives. A learning project involves tenths of organizations, groups, networks and individuals in numerous countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

4. As a way to increase effectiveness at Grupo Chorlav�, we have decided that all the Learning Projects between 2004 and 2008 will focus in one framework subject, within which all the subjects of each Learning Project will fall, as synthesized in the following phrase:

"Between 2004 and 2008, the Grupo Chorlav� activities will focus in institutional and productive transformation processes in poor and traditionally marginalized rural territories which, in spite of facing an adverse context, have been capable of becoming revalued through creative visions and strategies."

MINK'A DE CHORLAVÍ FUND
5. The Mink'a de Chorlav� Fund is an annual contest of Grupo Chorlav� aiming at funding institutional and/or productive transformation innovative experiences on systematization or applied research projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, and which topic and frame is the subject to be developed by the corresponding social learning project.

a) Systematization: A critical ordering and reflection process from one or more development experiences around a pre-defined issue or concern, with the participation of local actors and geared towards the generation of learned lessons permitting to improve own action, as well as to contribute to a broader knowledge body.

b) Poor and marginalized rural territories: These are geographic spaces characterized by the fragility of their eco-systems and socio-economic environment or context that hamper intensification of agriculture and restrict rural non-farming activity possibilities. They are usually limited in terms of productive infrastructure: roads, electrification, telecommunications, water and irrigation.

c) Decentralization: Change process in the conception, funding, execution and control of public policies, defined by two basic characteristics. Firstly, the stimulation of permanent and responsible relations among governmental players (bureaucrats and elected officials), private players (professional association representatives, labor unions, etc.) and civil society (NGOs, neighbor boards, environment defense associations, youth advocacy associations, etc.). Secondly, the restriction to a geographic or territorial area that should be sufficiently limited to favor the participation of the most important local forces in managing these policies.

d) Local Government: Formal government instance for the smallest territorial extension of the country's political-administrative management. In a democratic regime the local government is constituted through popular elections representing the municipality, commune, intendance or county population.

e) Governance: Formal and informal process of interaction between players for the behavior of a society. A governance system is made up by the (formal and informal) rules and procedures that configure an institutional framework in which the different implied actors must operate.

f) Development Councils: Instances created �either by law or not- that comply with the function of letting the municipality or local government learn about the community's aspirations concerning the management of said institutions.

QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED BY PROJECTS PARTICIPATING IN THE 2005 CONTEST
7. Some of the main problems posed by decentralization and that still produce a very limited impact in making social development more dynamic can be summarized as follows:

a) Local Development Councils tend to reflect the local conditions and social forces on which they are supported. Even when the need for popular participation is formally indicated, it is commonly dominated by local elites and clienteles. These Councils are often not sufficiently inclusive of discriminated, marginalized and less powerful sectors such as women, youth and, depending on context, the indigenous populations and afro-American peoples.

b) These councils frequently reduce their action to a very restricted local sphere (a commune or a small municipality) in which it is almost impossible to see the emergence of a true planning capacity.

c) Most Rural Development Councils have players related to the farming sector and rarely do proposals and actions linked to rural non-farming activities come from them.
d) The relationship pattern among these local institutions and the governmental funds on which their action depends favor bureaucratic procedures: localities benefited by public resources are chosen by objective criteria (poverty, participation of farmer populations and density) and not by the quality of the projects they can prepare profiting from their advices. There are no incentives for these councils to get private resources -besides State resources- to carry out their actions.

e) Local development councils rarely behave as learning organizations: they do not exchange experiences with their peers, are not obliged to publish the results of their actions, are not assessed by the results they get and, in most of the cases, are not linked to learning and research organizations..

f) Significant segments of local business organizations rarely make part of these councils. This increases the difficulty of promoting popular entrepreneurship -as a way to fight poverty- and its consequent feasibility to permit those in poverty situation to become inserted in better markets.

g) The result is that these councils rarely contribute to productive innovations and organizations capable of improving the social insertion -and mainly insertion in new and better markets- of those who are currently in poverty situation.

8. There is no doubt that there are many experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean in which local governments were able to make of social participation a decisive element in creating the right environment for development. These experiences also allowed for improving the living conditions of poor rural sectors through the productive and institutional transformation that revalues the territory. The current learning project's interest consists in knowing if Inter.-municipal coordination is or is not one of the important means to overcome the regional governments' frequent problems.

9. The fund aims at having systematization help to respond the following core question: Does coordination between local and/or municipal governments strengthen the decentralized cooperative governance process or, on the contrary, does it fundamentally express a political articulation in which the most important development actors are absent and it contributes little to revalue rural territories?

10. This core question can be tackled by the projects participating in the Contest through more specific subjects and questions such as:

a) Which are the social forces, understood as organizations representing demands from different actors, that participate in the coordination between local and/or municipal governments?

b) How can governance inside organizations be described so as to permit coordination between local and/or municipal governments? Is it feasible, in spite of the existence of party differences, to have eventual inter.-municipal development partnerships or projects?

c) What are the incentives and mechanisms to allocate the costs and benefits of these partnerships among local and/or municipal governments?

d) What are the impacts of the existence of these partnerships among local and/or municipal governments?

e) Is it possible for coordination among local and/or municipal governments to efficiently overcome public policy execution?

f) Which are the juridical figures of partnerships among local and/or municipal governments used to establish their inception and operation and that regulate resource or power decentralization in favor of local governments?

11. The fund also seeks to get lessons of how local governments and their partnerships may contribute for rural communities to become more inclusive, in the sense that equity inside the territory and homes becomes characterized by inclusion degrees of traditionally excluded social groups and categories, such as women, Afro-Latin-Americans, indigenous peoples, landless peasants, concerning access both to benefits and power. It is important to be able to identify out of these lessons the conditions that could result in public policy actions or interventions of several development actors to facilitate similar experiences in other groups.

RESULTS EXPECTED FROM THE 2005 CONTEST
12. The entities participating in the Contest and which projects are finally selected will have to participate in the project social learning complete cycle as understood by Grupo Chorlaví. This cycle includes three main stages:

a) Carrying out the contest-winning systematization, including a coordination workshop where those responsible for each winning project should participate. This systematization should include adopting agreements for all the winning projects so that they all make up the most coherent and articulated group geared towards the development of a social learning project..

b) Comparative analysis of project results aiming at drawing conclusions, lessons and recommendations those are more generally valid.

13. The main result of the projects participating in the 2005 Contest will be the systematization of one or more experiences on the role of local governments and decentralization in the strengthening of strategies that may allow revaluing poor and marginalized rural territories: experiences of partnerships among local and/or municipal governments. Said systematization shall produce conclusions, learned lessons and recommendations referred to the questions asked in paragraphs 9 and 10 of this Call.

14. Final winning-project reports will be the main input for a comparative analysis, which together with a consultation and debate process (by means of an e-conference), should produce a synthesis document to respond the core question specified in paragraph 9 of this Call..

DEADLINES
15. The Contest stage deadlines are:

MINK'A DE CHORLAVÍ FUND REGULATIONS
16. This Contest is ruled by the Mink'a de ChorlavÍ Fund Regulations. Parties interested in participating in the Contest must previously know and analyze these Regulations in detail. This document brings information on:

(a) The characteristics of the organizations that may present proposals to the contest.
(b) Proposal presentation and other contest stage deadlines.
(c) Project eligibility, merit and selection criteria.
(d) Maximum amounts the Fund will donate, budget items that can be funded and co-funding requirements.
(e) Proposal reception, evaluation and selection process.
(f) Mandatory proposal format characteristics.
(g) Contracts to be signed with the organizations which projects are chosen and co-funding transfer procedure for resources contributed by the Fund.
(h) Selected project execution deadline
(i) Partial and final, technical and financial reports to be presented.
(j) Grupo ChorlavÍ Committee powers to make decisions linked to this Contest.
(k) Other general aspects of the Mink'a de ChorlavÍ Fund Contest and of Grupo ChorlavÍ.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
17. The Regulations, as well as other information of interest, are available at (www.grupochorlavi.org) or can be requested to:

RIMISP
Casilla 228 -22, Santiago, Chile
Phone + (56-2) 236 45 57
Fax + (56-2) 236 45 58
rimisp@rimisp.org

18. Every official information related to this contest will be published at www.grupochorlavi.org. All interested parties are regularly encouraged to participate in this contest at this web site, so they are informed on any news that may be relevant for their participation or proposal on a timely basis.