There is a situation in our country, when the economic and social development of the communities almost entirely depends on government subsidies, dotations and subventions.
This fact, certainly, does not contribute to the development of community self-government and self-sufficiency. Moreover, such conditions hinder the implementation of community initiatives, particularly, investment projects.
“Khazer” NGO with funding from The GEF Small Grants Programme is implementing “Introduction of financial mechanism for the RA intended nationally determined contributions in medium and small urban and rural communities” project since March 1, 2017.
The project is aimed at changing the situation by involving the population of communities and settlements in identifying and resolving socio-economic development and environmental issues.
The project is based on the idea of establishing a Green Climate Civic Circulating Investment Fund which is the inalienable right of the community residents.
The capital fund will consist of two components:
- a)Investment funds provided by this project, donors and other sources,
- b)Permanent financing: annual environmental subsidies allocated to the community from State budget;
The goal of the project is to help the community residents and civil society representatives to get engaged in the process of identification and resolution of issues related tosocio-economic development and environment.
The most important issue of civic circulating investment fund formation process is the real and active involvement of the residents, which in its turn implies the sufficient level of self-organization capacity of community residents.
The primary group of the residents’ self-organization is the community, and in the case of community enlargement, it is the residence. Therefore it is preferable to begin the formation process of civic circulating investment fund from medium and small urban and rural communities of RA.
We invite the residents of all the communities and settlements to get involved in this project, to initiate the creation of climate civic circulating investment funds and participate in the Community Investment Projects Competition.
To expand the content and financial activities of the innovative project it is planned to create a project consortium. A number of non-governmental organizations, local self-government bodies, and ongoing projects already expressed their willingness to join the consortium.
Currently Organizations that agreed to join the consortium are:
- World wide fund for nature Armenian branch (WWF-Armenia),
- “Country Water Partnership” scientific, ecological NGO
- “Armenia inter-church charitable round table Foundation”