Community development services: quarter 1 report 1st January - 31 March 2006

During the First Quarter of 2006 Community Department focused mainly on project planning and implementation of some plans that ranged from in-house operations and visits to the communities. The department had maintained a close interaction with local communities as well as with policy makers at district, regional as well as national levels. In an effort to strengthen the above interactions, the Department had embarked on a consultative process to inform itself of community development engagements through information sharing (submission of monthly reports, Bulletins and discussions). The challenges during the course of the first quarter had been a prolonged dry spell which affected most of our communities. It had been difficult for the community members to exercise a self-help attitude through both cash and in-kind contributions to their development plans. The department had then employed a number of initiatives aimed at giving support to local communities -focusing on food shortage. The supports referred here include supply of drought resistant seeds (sorghum) and short duration maize seeds worth 31,000$.KMCLalsoauthorizedfunds(15,000$) to be donated to be donated to Kahama District Council to support the government initiatives for food relief. Within the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), the finalization of a number of tasks and especially the compilation of a 6 year plan of programmes took up a considerable time and we have the plans ready. Currently the department is busy with capacity building activities through a series of training programmes such as train PRA committees formulated during PRA Phase I. other training include leadership, small scale enterprising, gender and farm management. The focus of such training had been to equip various committee members and local leaders with basic skills to be able to manage their community development plans. We also implemented various on site activities during this period and this included provision of support in community construction and infrastructure development, social services like water rehabilitation, donations and site visits.