**1. Introduction**

### **1.1 Background**

The Community Driven Development (CDD) projects have become an important channel of development assistance for village. CDD programs stem from the trust in local people by treating them especially poor people as assets and partners in the development process. Recently, more than 80 countries have implemented CDD projects.

Experiences from many countries show that by directly relying on poor people to drive development activities. CDD has the potential to make poverty reduction efforts more responsive to the needed, more inclusive, more sustainable, and more cost-effective than traditional centrally led programs [1].

In Lao PDR, the Poverty Reduction Fund Project (PRF) initiated the CDD in 2003 which was among the earliest CDD approach development project. The CDD approach has been applied to more than 5,000 sub-projects in 2,000 villages in Lao PDR. The CDD approach is considered an effective poverty reduction mechanism to promote local development and capacity building, improve service delivery, and provide risk management instruments to the poor. Compared to an earlier generation of community-based rural development projects where communities acted as rather passive beneficiaries, recent CDD projects give communities more voice and place communities at the center of the development process [2].

While there is general recognition of the potential of CDD approach, there remain criticisms regarding: conceptual issues, practical issues, institutional issues. These shortcomings of CDD approach could decrease the effectiveness and sustainability of the projects.

Questions often arise among development practitioners whether CDD projects sustainable? Does the more participation of community on the project bring more sustainability? and what are factors determining the sustainability of CDD projects? These questions come from the fact that many CDD projects could not survive without continued financial support. Since many CDD projects are constructed in poor villages, they could not effort for operating and maintaining costs. Therefore, confirming a correlation between a CDD approach development project and its sustainability is critical especially for Lao PDR to achieve her sustainability poverty reduction goal.

It is thus interesting to observe the community's participation on the CDD project and relationship with the sustainability. The participation refers to the community participate on finance, labor, management, and coordination on the CDD project while the sustainability of defines as whether the project is still functioning and how the community response when the project requires the maintenance.

#### **1.2 Objectives**

The overall objective of this research is to assess the sustainability of CDD projects in Lao PDR. The specific objectives are to investigate whether the com-munity's contributions do matter for the current existence of CDD projects and to assess the factors determining sustainability of CDD project.

## **2. Literature review**

### **2.1 CDD project and sustainability**

Community Driven Development is considered an effective poverty reduction mechanism to promote local development and capacity building, improve service delivery, and provide risk management instruments to the poor. Most of the evidence reviewed compares CDD project sites with communities that are otherwise similar but are either blank slates without any projects or have received other interventions of unclear method and provenance. Khwaja [3] compares a random sample of AKRSP projects with other projects in the same village that were built without any participation from the community. Consistent with the theory, Khwaja finds that community managed projects are better maintained than projects managed by the local government.

Khwaja's findings are consistent with Finsterbusch and Van Wincklin [4]. In their meta-analysis of project reports from 52 USAID projects that had participatory elements, they conclude that projects that were less technically complex were more effective, as were smaller projects. Facilities constructed with community involvement tend to be quite effective in improving access to public services. Paxson and Scady [5] for instance find that the Peruvian social fund, FONCODES, increased school attendance particularly for younger children.

Chase and Sherburne-Benz [6] evaluating the Zambia social fund report similar findings on school attendance. They also find that the presence of a school

#### *Assessing the Sustainability of Community-Driven Development Projects in Lao PDR DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96406*

constructed by the social fund seemed to increase household education expenditures, and the presence of a health facility increased use of primary care and prevalence of child vaccinations. Katz and Sara [7] analyze the performance of water systems in a variety of countries. They find that the performance of water systems was markedly better in communities where households were able to make informed choices about the type of system and the level of service they required, and where decision making was genuinely democratic and inclusive.

Katz and Sara also report that community members were more willing to pay for investment costs when they had control over the funds and were particularly unwilling to contribute if funds were controlled by government staff or contractor There is further evidence correlating greater community participation with better project outcomes. Isham and Kahkonen [8, 9] in two analyses of water projects in Indonesia and India and Sri Lanka confirm that greater community participation is associated with better water supply and that well designed community-based water services lead to improvements in health outcomes. Heterogeneity in project effectiveness is largely explained by the ability of a community to engage in collective action, and high levels of 'social capital' improve participation in design and monitoring.

This is also the conclusion of Rao and Ibanez [10] studying the Jamaica Social Fund who find that a community's capacity for collective action influences its ability to generate a successful application for funds. Regarding project sustain ability, Khwaja's study suggests that since community managed projects are better maintained they are also more sustainable that those managed by local governments. Katz and Sara and Isham and Kahkonen also find strong associations between participation and sustainability.

### **2.2 CDD projects in Lao PDR**

In Lao PDR, donors have increasingly used CDD components in their projects to promote effectiveness and efficiency of poverty reduction efforts. Since 2004, according to a social protection and community development project inventory compiled by the World Bank, 6 projects within Lao PDR maintained a CDD component. After 2 years, about 25 projects implemented by multilateral and bilateral donors, and INGOs, possessed a CDD component. Active donors include the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the European Union (EU), the World Bank, the German Agro Action (GAA), Village Focus International (VFI), World Concern, as well as other INGOs.

CDD projects were mainly concentrated in the northernmost provinces, the provinces bordering Vietnam, and in the southern provinces. CDD projects aim to empower communities, reduce poverty, and improve economic and social conditions of the poor in rural and remote areas. These programs seek to enhance village capacity and increase local ownership by helping communities to identify and prioritize their needs and develop and implement community development plans. Community-based participatory planning and implementation is a common feature of CDD projects, usually accompanied by efforts to ensure women's participation.

In almost all provinces, CDD projects support education, health, livelihood activities, and agriculture. The education sector (infrastructure, support of formal and non-formal education, curriculum development, teaching materials) receives the greatest support, followed by the health sector (infrastructure, family planning and reproductive health support, health education and training, water and sanitation, mother and childcare), agriculture (agricultural training, food crop

and livestock production, irrigation), and livelihood activities. Most CDD projects support activities in the poorest provinces, but not necessarily in provinces with a high proportion of ethnic minorities. Most provinces receiving multiple projects with CDD components, such as Huaphan, Phongsaly, Oudomxay, Luangnamtha, Attapeu, and Xekong, face high poverty incidence; nonetheless, provinces such as Champasak, Xiangkuang and Savannakhet also receive a high number of projects despite being less poor. Since then, CDD components are widely adopted and implemented in most development projects country wide.

The largest Bank's CDD project in Laos is the Poverty Reduction Fund (PRF) supported by World Bank, which assists the development of small-scale, community-based infrastructure and other activities in the water, transportation, education, health, and agricultural sectors to reduce poverty in rural villages. The Poverty Reduction Fund Project (PRF) has been the World Bank's primary instrument for supporting community-driven rural development in poor upland districts. Building on the experience of a UNDP-supported pilot on participatory planning approaches in 2000, the PRF adapted and developed tools and detailed methodologies appropriate to the context of the poorest districts. The objectives of the PRF are to: (i) Assist villagers to develop community infrastructure and gain improved access to services; (ii) Build capacity and empower poor villages in poor districts to plan, manage, and implement their own public investments in a decentralized and transparent manner; and (iii) Strengthen local institutions to support participatory decision-making and conflict resolution processes at the village, khet, and district levels, involving a broad range of villagers including women, the poor, and ethnic minorities.
