Community Based Recovery

We finished the new propaganda for our CBR program today. Here's an excerpt:

Tsunami-affected villages in Aceh have two options: either Breakdown or Break Through. The Community-Based Recovery (CBR) Initiative assists communities to Break Through--already affecting 52 Acehnese villages in very real ways, everyday--and to achieve real impacts:

▪ strengthen trust between citizens and government;
▪ reduce barriers to return, thus maximizing citizens' options;
▪ increase access to basic services;
▪ re-develop or develop new economic livelihoods; and
▪ ensure community success through empowerment.

Our project has developed a systems-oriented community recovery program that uses skilled facilitation to empower, build positive-thinking, and target goal-oriented success in a systems approach of community planning, mapping, and decision-making. CBR has already dispersed some IDR 15.3 billion (or approximately US$1.62 million) in entry grants to 52 communities, aimed at injecting much-needed income into villages, generating hope, and motivating villages to develop the future of their villages. CBR can utilize both USG and private sector funds and is designed to be scaled up depending upon available resources.

CBR is community-driven, designed specifically for post-Tsunami Aceh to assist in physical, social, and psychological recovery and reconstruction. Through a cadre of robustly trained, community facilitators, programs are developed by communities through community consultation, ensuring inclusion of aspirations of all village members – including women and young people. Our trained facilitators will be armed with necessary resources and skills to encourage Positive Thinking and assist communities to more successfully confront a range of challenges: primary and secondary trauma, intra-village conflict, good governance in times of distress, trust-building and community planning for durable solutions. Trusted relationships will be built between USAID-CBR and communities to more thoroughly address immediate and long-term recovery needs. With sufficient resources, CBR will assist reconstruction of key small-scale local infrastructure such as health clinics, village sanitation, schools, and community centers.

CBR improves village governance through more active, responsible, principled leadership based upon processes of inclusive community planning--more swiftly and efficiently redeveloping physical and social infrastructure. CBR can serve as a platform to facilitate other USAID and non-USAID inputs into villages to ensure realization of community targets. While we maintain a zero-tolerance policy vis-a-vis corruption of project resources, gender inequality and environmental degradation, we contribute to participant villages' development of durable good governance--a much needed commodity in Aceh. Community leadership is developed and strengthened from the grassroots.

CBR contributes to enhanced trust between government and people resulting in better service delivery through better interaction. Historically in Aceh trust has remained extremely low--a key impediment both to sustainable development and lasting peace. CBR facilitation improves collaboration between the people and their government. Village-level data tracking will demonstrate the increased useful participation of officials in local civic life and breaking through the barriers of previous distrust.

CBR encourages diversification of livelihoods and income-generating activities that may be more productive than pre-tsunami. This is particularly important where immediate return to previous livelihoods remains impossible due to loss of fertile land to contamination, land-fill, or the sea. More income means more choice and more options for villagers and certainly means more control over personal and community decision-making.

CBR is changing villagers' perceptions and mindsets. Instead of waiting for reconstruction to come to them, they make it happen themselves. Sleeping and traumatized minds awake, communities Break Through and engage in meaningful physical and social reconstruction. CBR villages will demonstrate the most rapid recovery and most sustainable recovery. And since these villages are parts of larger social and governmental systems, their success will have a direct, positive impact throughout Acehnese society.