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The Community Empowerment Network (CEN):

Communities of Practice for Local Capacity in Central Asia

World Bank Institute (WBI)World Bank Institute (WBI)

Europe and Central Asia Social Development unit (ECSSD)Europe and Central Asia Social Development unit (ECSSD)

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• “Critical issues for scaling up CDD in

Central Asia prepared by the CDD

Working Group/ECSSD (especially

knowledge management and

sharing pillar)

CEN and Context for Community Driven Development (CDD) in Central Asia

• CAS (e.g. Community-Linked Development in Tajikistan)

• Lending operations (NSIFT, VIP, AzRIP)

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Knowledge sharing – A Tool for Scaling Up

• The Community Empowerment

Network for Azerbaijan, Kyrgyz

Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan

(CEN) was launched by WBI and

the Europe and Central Asia Social

Development unit (ECSSD) in late

2002 as a community of practice

for community-driven

development (CDD)

practitioners.

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• Launching of various CDD-type operations in a short time in CAR, yet not enough time to capture and share lessons and knowledge

• The CoP tool was chosen by WBI to build capacity in Central Asia for scaling up Community-driven Development (CDD)

Knowledge sharing – A Tool for Scaling Up (cont)

• CEN contributed to the creation of an ongoing, year-round, national-level activity that would allow for greater impact on the ground, and act as a more flexible tool to support the strategy for scaling up.

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For CDD and Communities of Practice:

Added value of the CoP as a means to scale up CDD is

that both approaches are mutually reinforcing since

they stress the critical importance of social capital.

Knowledge sharing – A Tool for Scaling Up (cont)

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Guiding Principles

WBI developed a set of guiding principles to help ensure lessons learned would be applied to ensure the success of the project.

These principles include:

- Local ownership

- Multi-stakeholder

participation/perspectives

- Year-round activity

- Linkage to World Bank

country activities

- Partnerships to leverage

knowledge and resources

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Two major levels of networking

• National Networks 1. National Partner2. Steering Group3. Action Plan4. Mapping Exercise

• Regional Networking1. Monthly

Videoconferences2. Annual Conferences3. Regional Web4. E-Newsletter5. Closed E-mail

distribution list

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Evaluation Results

• Worked moderately well

- Government involvement

- Stock-taking of CDD Initiatives

- Regional exchange

• What has worked?

- Public awareness building

- Community-to-community knowledge sharing

-Tapping into local knowledge

- Local Partnership

- Building institutional capacity for CDD

- Local language focus

• Didn’t work so well

– Linkages to World Bank Operations

– Innovative approaches

– Donor coordination

– Objectives and evaluation

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Challenges and Constraints

• Advanced programming in a multi-year capacity building initiative

• Learning and KS may involve a small financial investment as compared to lending operations, yet time intensive

• Linking to Operations vs. in-country multi-stakeholder ownership

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The future of CEN

• WBI will focus more on the regional dimension, with a focus on distance learning and Internet technologies.

• The expectation is thatrather than providing funds for each Networkto use, the Networks will instead come to WBI when they need resources, whether financial or intellectual, for specific activities.

Different starting points different progress

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Lessons for Better Communities of Practice

• Place a greater emphasis on peer review between countries

• Establish clear indicators of progress • Focus as much on processes as on

activities