Helping People Help Myself

This is a timing for project formulation at UNDP country office - it's still ongoing. Before the initiation of project identification and formulation, the country office established an agreement with the government of India, which led to United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) and Country Programme Action Plan (CPAP). Those framework and action plan include programme areas and target outcomes. For example, during the 5 years of the new UNDAF and CPAP, UNDP India will work on several themes - poverty reduction, governance, HIV and environment. My team is focusing on poverty reduction particularly microfinance, livelihood promotions, public-private-community-partnerships and monitoring&evaluations of national poverty reduction schemes.

In short, many things to do.... hiring local consultants to do research and assessment, brainstorming and developing some documents at UNDP office, interviews with local institutions and civil societies, a lot of discussions with government officials (Planning Commissions, Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of Housing and Urban Poor etc) etc

The field trip to Orissa was a part of assessment for a project formulation. I will be staying in Hyderabad for 4 days next week to discuss monitoring mechanisms and tools, to visit on-going project sites, and to discuss Andhra Pradesh government people.

Although our team's program budget is not huge, the scope and varieties of projects hit my core interests - very exciting to dig in!