World Vision China has successfully gained the permission of the state government to launch a Community-Driven Development Pilot Project in Nanning, Guangxi. This is the first agreement of its type the Chinese government signed with an international nongovernmental organization.
On May 31, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development's Foreign Capital Project Management Center and the World Bank, have signed the agreement with World Vision China, according to the latest press statement.
The Project mainly aims to achieve poverty alleviation and development in some rural areas in China. The 4 pilot sites are Guangxi, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia. The Center and World Vision will work hand in hand in areas including community-driven development, HIV/AIDS and poverty alleviation, migrant workers, poverty alleviation comparison studies and poverty alleviation publications.
The total investment is about 48 million RMB. About 100,000 needy villagers from 60 administrative villages will be benefited in two years' time, World Vision stated.
Concerning the operation of the Project, it has been planned in detail. Deputy Director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, Wang Guoliang, explained that this new project is pioneering many aspects.
Not only this is the first time an international NGO involves in Chinese government's poverty alleviation project, but the beneficiary will also enjoy a high degree of participation to communicate their needs and control the use of resources in order to achieve the principle of "community-driven.
In the Project, villagers are allowed to decide, use and control the resources, while the government mainly supervises and supports through the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development's Foreign Capital Project Management Center. Self-governance of villages with poverty alleviation projects is incorporated, World Vision China reported.
According to World Vision China, the Center is mainly responsible to execute and supervise foreign capital projects. It employs domestic and foreign capital, information, technology and management experience to try out new poverty alleviation and development approaches under the guidance of the government's policy.
World Vision China has already been serving in Mainland for 24 years. China is very sensitive to the infiltration of foreign power, thus the work of World Vision, which has a Christian background, cannot be developed in a very big scale in China at the beginning. However, due to the more opened policy in China as well as the increasing contribution of World Vision to the overall development of rural China, the Chinese authorities started to invite World Vision and signaled their willingness to cooperate together.
In this project, World Vision was invited to work in Wengniute County in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to provide training and tutorship.
World Vision China has a high expectation for this Pilot Project. It says that if the pilot projects are successful, the community-driven development model may become a significant device in a broader scale of poverty alleviation work in the future.
