Innovative Approaches to Community Development in Afghanistan: The Public Resources Map

By: Christopher James Wahoff and Ahmad Shaheer Shahriar[1]

Rural development is rapidly changing in Afghanistan. Whereas traditional structures placed the decision-making power in the hands of a community’s male elders, today women and young people work side by side with their community members to analyze, develop multifaceted Community Development Plans, and select new development projects for their communities through the Public Resources Map, Well-being Analysis, “Leaking Pot” Analysis, and other participatory development planning tools. This categorical shift is the product of concerted efforts from multiple national administrations beginning with the National Solidarity Program (NSP) to the current Citizens’ Charter Afghanistan Project (CCAP), and a result of the support of the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund's (ARTF) 34 donor countries and organizations.[2]    

The current CCAP program not only recognizes that Afghanistan has suffered from chronic instability and conflict during its modern history, leaving the country’s economy and infrastructure in ruin, but it also provides innovative pathways for communities to promote inclusive development on their terms. To prepare their plans, each of the current 13,005 (12,155 rural and 850 urban) community development councils (CDCs) takes part in participatory, community-driven exercises that are meant to provide a nuanced understanding of each community’s economic and social relations with a focus on seasonal hunger, indebtedness, poor wages, lack of access to health services and education, among other factors. The sequential exercises and analyses not only emphasize understanding the key dimensions of poverty, but also how poor families experience poverty in each community.

To better understand underlying socio-economic dynamics in rural and urban contexts[3], professionally-trained social organizers hired by the national government lead each participating community in the development of a Public Resources Map. Men and women representatives of 60 percent of all households gather around in a large field to visually represent and demarcate the location of neighborhoods, community resources, rivers, mosques, roads, public resources (schools, clinics, asphalted roads, irrigation canals, etc.) and CDC-led investments, and the location of CDC leaders’ homes within each community. The objective of this exercise is to increase communities’ collective understanding of development investment and the existing power structures throughout each neighborhood. The findings are then transposed on a large permanent map for their future reference. The final product visually exposes the existing relationship between the allocation of public resources and the residences of community leaders versus those of other members. In some communities, this work illustrates the stark contrast of income inequality as it relates to public investment, especially related to the elite capture of public resources.

For many members of the community, the Public Resources Map is their first experience with this level of financial information sharing on CDC activities and as a tool to promote improved transparency, allowing them to make better decisions regarding community leadership in the future. Nasrullah, a resident of CharSang Village in the Balkh District of Balkh Province noted that, “[t]hrough the Public Resources Map, we found that there are 560 households in CharSang Village. We [learned] about the whole geography of our village, identified what public resources exist in this village and how we can use them. We also identified the gaps and shortages which will help us to find how to work with the government, donor agencies and NGOs to address these gaps as part of our Community Development Plans.”

As a result of the Public Resources Map and other interventions, the approximately 13.5 million CCAP beneficiaries have a better understanding of their community’s dynamics, public spending through their local CDC on public works and infrastructure projects, a greater sense of solidarity among community members and greater trust in the government. In an interview, an elder from the Loye Kali Community in the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province succinctly summarized CCAP’s impact: “In my 65 years of life, no one came to our community to ask us about what we have or need in our community, and we did not understand the real causes of our problems. Until now, no one had asked us about seasonal unemployment or our community’s resources. Through [Citizens’ Charter] we were able to identify and better understand the underlying causes of poverty and hunger in our community.” It is imperative that CCAP continues to provide these opportunities for Loye Kali and the over 13,000 communities that currently rely on the project to promote tangible change from the ground-up.

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