Milking opportunities for participation in Armenia
Armenia, 28 August 2008 – The participation of local people in making funding decisions for spending in their communities has great benefits in several areas: as well as promoting active citizenship and accountability in local budgetary decisions, such a budget methodology ensures live concerns are reflected in these decisions, with tangible impact on local economic development. This method for the implementation of UNDP projects is used alongside decentralization efforts in Armenia, and most recently gave birth to three new milk collection centres in the northern Tavush region.
Last week, three milk collection and marketing units were officially launched in the border villages of Varagavan, Nerkin Karmiraghbyur and Tovuz, in Tavush region. These centres will receive milk daily from around 1000 dairy farmers in these and neighbouring communities, and sell it to the Ashtarak-Kat dairy company. The partners in this project – UNDP, the Center of Agribusiness and Rural Development (CARD), Ashtarak-Kat CJSC and the rural municipalities – worked from June 2007 to renovate the necessary buildings and install contemporary cooling and testing equipment. Two milk collection trucks were also provided.
In addition to this new opportunity for generating income, the project ensures that ongoing consultations will be delivered to local farmers as to maintaining milk quality and sanitary-hygiene norms.
The need for this project was identified and prioritized by all the three villages through participatory community budget planning process. UNDP has been working with these and other Armenian communities to introduce the new budgeting methodology which provides for a higher level quality management of community resources and also for participatory planning and execution of community budget.
In keeping with this spirit of local control, milk marketing cooperatives created in each community will supervise and organize the work of the milk collection centres.
The integrated process of community budgeting modification in selected urban and rural communities was started by UNDP in 2006. Over the course of the project implementation, it was made possible not only to pilot the new budgeting model but also to accommodate it to the particularities of the Armenian local self-governance. Thus all the involved communities developed their budgets using the new methodology.
As a follow-up initiative, capital investment projects prioritized and approved by the general community meeting were implemented in each community with co-funding by UNDP. Among them is the construction of irrigation water and gas supply pipelines (villages of Sarigyugh and Nerkin Tsaghkavan, Tavush region), reconstruction of city street lighting network (Ararat town, Ararat region), rehabilitation of an extracurricular educational center (Artik town, Shirak region), installation of a municipal waste management system (Meghri city, Syunik marz), renovation of residential buildings’ entrances (Masis town, Ararat region), installation of a local gas-fired heating system in a kindergarten (Abovian city, Kotayk region) and more initiatives identified and implemented in urban and rural communities around Armenia.
This year, as part of the budget execution UNDP supports the community of Alaverdi, Lori region to fully renovate the town’s Music School with installation of a new local heating system. In partnership with the municipality of Dilijan town, Tavush region, UNDP also works on a new project aimed at the rehabilitation of the Lions’ Stairs, a 30-meter long architectural complex located in the administrative center of Dilijan.
With introduction of the new model, the interest of the local population towards participatory planning and budgeting has sizably increased in all communities – the community development plan and budget have become the result of collective work. The overall process has been supported by capacity-building programmes organized for local self-governments and municipality staff. Through a number of study tours, on-spot consultations and seminars the participants, among them heads and deputy heads of communities, representatives of municipalities’ staffs and community councils, were presented with opportunities and features of the new model. In the pilot communities, public hearings were organized before draft budgets were presented for approval by community councils. Through initiative groups working in the communities, the local population, staffs of municipalities and community-based organizations were provided with an opportunity to get introduced to community budget and to openly express their opinion.
Today, after two years of piloting five communities involved at the first stage of the project are ready to carry on the performance budgeting process independently. Accordingly, the community councils and staffs of the municipalities fully comprehend the advantages of the new budgeting model.
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