FODESA

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• (FODESA)
• 1999 2009

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MAP OF MALI FODESA INTERVENTION AREAS
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MAIN OBJECTIVE

• To help reduce the grip of poverty on rural
  families in the Sahelian zone of Mali by
• Increasing their income
• Improving their living conditions.

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To meet this objective, the programme intends to

• initiate and promote a process of sustainable,
  participatory development
• Satisfy communities requests when these will
  lead to improvements in household income and
  well-being
• satisfy requests for essential social
  infrastructure

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COMPONENTS

• The programme is structured around three
  components
• support for local development
• development of decentralized financial services
• programme management

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Support for Local Development

• allows the financing of micro projects selected
  by villages or groups within villages according
  to their priorities these microprojects
  encompass
• basic socio-economic infrastructure giving people
  access to a minimum of public services
• productive projects ensuring a sustainable income
  for the beneficiaries
• environmental projects to protect and restore
  natural resources
• this component also includes a major subcomponent
  covering capacity-building for all the programme
  partners

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Developement of Decentralised Financial Services

• satisfaction of the current demand for setting up
  new savings and credit banks
• Financing the costs of setting up banks, as well
  as a refinancing and guarantee fund to facilitate
  womens access to credit

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Programme Management

• implementation of the programme by national and
  regional private law associations of
  beneficiaries
• provision of staff and technical support
• direct supervision of the programme by IFAD

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STRATEGY

• Carried out in Malis Sahelian zone
• a zone marked by irregular rainfall, growing
  pressure on land, and emigration
• the fundamental principle is the use, when
  implementing activities, of available and, tested
  know-how in the public services, the private
  sector and NGOs

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The FODESA Programme

• a response to real community demand of
• on the condition that local resources be
  mobilized
• and that village groups be established to
  undertake the activity

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Eligible Requests Include

• investment in financial services and production
• social and environmental infrastructure
• strengthening of community capacities

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Implementation is carried out

• under the responsibility of community members
  with FODESA support
• as partnership between village groups, FODESA,
  public services and private enterprises.

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SOME RESULTS

• From the actual start of activities in 2000 until
  today, the programme has achieved
• The organization of 179 information meetings in
  villages
• support for the holding of 264 participatory
  diagnosis sessions

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Results (continued)

• support for the implementation of 177
  microprojects
• functional literacy training benefiting 2 137
  people
• technical and management training of 1 423
  members of microproject management committees
• support for the creation of eight mutual savings
  and loan funds
• support for setting up three programme management
  associations including a number of key farmers
  organizations

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CONSTRAINTS AND SOLUTIONS

• difficulties in mobilizing beneficiaries
  contributions a series of bad harvests,
  irregular rainfall and other disasters, for
  example desert locust plagues, mean that people
  in the zone concerned have real difficulties in
  mobilizing their contributions to the
  implementation of their project
• Solution to adapt support to local conditions
• by progressively helping people to choose
  projects for which they can mobilize their
  contributions
• by anticipating special emergency support in case
  of disaster (for example locusts)
• poor capacity of local service and work
  providers the use of local know-how, encouraged
  and favoured by the programme, following the
  limited volume of works (village scale) often
  comes up against the providers lack of skills
  and resources

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Constraints/Solutions (continued)

• difficulties in mobilizing women for training
  outside their villages or for periods of more
  than a week
• Solution sensitizing of men and leaders
  shortening the length of training courses
  bringing training locations as close as possible
  to the women

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Constraints/Solutions (continued)

• too large an intervention zone, so that
  interventions become too dispersed
• Solution circumscribing the intervention zone in
  the hope of reaching a critical mass of visible
  actions
• difficulties in using documents and other
  communications from IFAD produced in English
• Solution the use of French is requested in order
  to avoid poor understanding of documents and
  delays resulting from prior translation made by
  the programme

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Lessons learned midway through programme
implementation

• The sustainability of the projects executed or
  the viability of development operations initiated
  by the programme depends to a large extent on the
  level of beneficiary participation in their
  conception, implementation, running and
  evaluation it has been observed that the
  programmes that run properly are those initiated
  by the people themselves without outside
  influence .

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Lessons Learned

• Viability and participation mean that in the
  context of project implementation the target
  population must not be viewed as beneficiaries
  but rather as responsible people in charge of the
  identification implementation and management of
  the projects being carried out.
• The feeling of being active, truly responsible
  and committed participants is stronger among the
  population in the context of the demand approach
  than in projects where the decision to implement
  has been taken outside their community.
• It has been observed that with the demand
  approach, the population shows a definite
  tendency to propose microprojects likely to
  generate short-term benefits even if
  participatory diagnosis reveals constraints
  linked to severe degradation of natural
  resources, they rarely propose projects aimed at
  solving these.

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Lessons Learned

• The demand approach is also not sensitive to
  activities concerning the development and
  diffusion of technologies where the anticipated
  results are usually long-term no such request
  has been recorded since the start of the
  programme.
• Approaches other than the demand approach are
  needed for implementation of projects aimed at
  long-term results project conception should
  therefore take different intervention methods
  into account in order to integrate short-term,
  medium-term and long-term solutions.
• The development of activities relating to
  information management and communications, both
  inside and outside the project, is as important
  in a multi-partner programme are the pursuit of
  training and study activities and the
  accomplishment of the project objectives tasks.