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Community Action 2015
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UNDP and Community Action: The Concept Behind the Community Action 2015 Group
What is the Issue? Development issues are global, yet they are experienced at the local level in communities throughout the world. As the development arm of the United Nations, UNDP is uniquely positioned to make the MDGs meaningful for the deprived people at the community-level whose lives they are intended to improve. Communities are the vital driving force of development. Over the past decade, an integral understanding of how local communities manage change, combined with innovative approaches to capacity development at all levels and among a broad spectrum of stakeholders, has proven critical to achieving development goals. Lessons and experience demonstrate the need to work with communities to help shape and realize international, national and local policies. UNDP regards communities as key actors in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and is working, therefore, to ensure that community experience informs the MDGs framework and the strategies employed in their achievement. By increasing the awareness of community-based initiatives, UNDP will help identify the processes that underlie each MDG target date and outcome. UNDP, with key support of partners, will complement existing capacity development programs and strengthen synergies between policy level and ground-up initiatives to achieve the MDGs. What is Community Capacity Development? The rationale for Community Action 2015 is recognition of the critical role of local communities in advancing sustainable development through achievement of the MDGs. An integral understanding of how local communities manage change, combined with innovative approaches to capacity development at all levels and among a broad spectrum of stakeholders, has proven critical to achieving development goals. To this end, the Group’s focus is on community capacity development with an emphasis on sharing knowledge and good practice between communities themselves as well as policy makers at all levels. CA2015 will play a unique role as a conduit for information sharing and a platform for capacity development programs while bringing together different stakeholders in development
As the UN’s global development network with worldwide presence in more than 166 countries, UNDP seeks to promote local efforts to achieve the MDGs, WEHAB and other poverty reduction targets by advocating and strengthening synergies between policy-level and ground-up initiatives. Over the past decades, UNDP has pioneered several programmes that have successfully reached out to and supported community-based initiatives for sustainable development. These programmes have provided important lessons and experience on which other UNDP- activities can draw to increase their impact, effectiveness and sustainability. UNDP will therefore build on the knowledge acquired by these experiences to implement programmes which maximize their impact by strengthening initiatives of local communities as well as fostering an enabling policy environment. CA105 supports and highlights innovative community level good practice across sectors, integrating efforts from a variety of stakeholders and partners to provide capacity development tools to local level actors. Community Action 2015 targets key drivers of sustainable development – community actors – and works to identify their successes while leveraging partnerships and improved organizational and technical capacity to increase scale and impact. The Community Action 2015 Group will work specifically to incorporate and link existing capacity development programs to support good practices, local leadership, and stronger synergies between policy-level and ground-up initiatives to achieve the MDGs.
The CA2015 will yield benefits to various groups:
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