National CERCAP
Implementation Core Team (NCICT)
Terms of Reference

The NCICT will work under the direction of the CERCAP Secretariat and report through it to the CERCAP Sub-Committee. The terms of reference of the NCICT will include the following functions at the national level, which are critical to the effective implementation of the CERCAP:

1. Provide a one-stop crisis-response centre at the national level

• Provide a national focal point for CERCAP information flow to and from provincial one-stop crisis centres
• Promote and facilitate one-stop access to information on policies, plans and programmes of the core ministries
• Provide national overview of CERCAP operations and progress
• Support the implementation of effective MIS and other information systems at all levels of the CERCAP organization, ensuring the inclusion of gender and other equity indicators in all information systems and databases
• Ensure access to information on CERCAP to the media and the public at all levels.

1. Support the CERCAP communication strategy and social mobilization strategy

• Develop and implement a CERCAP communication strategy
• Develop and implement a CERCAP social mobilization strategy
• Support communication and social mobilization activities
• Keep the mass media informed of CERCAP developments and events

• Create community media outlets and opportunities and arrange national platforms

1. Monitor budget allocation and financial management

• Monitor budget availability for community plans
• Monitor budget allocation at various levels and identify funding bottlenecks
• Analyze budget allocation patterns to identify regional and gender disparities and recommend redistribution where necessary
• Develop strategies for budget innovations to overcome rigidities in the support of community plans
• Report to CERCAP Sub-committee on financial management issues

1. Support capacity development and the creation of learning opportunities

• Working with Regional Technical Centres of CDD and the Rajabhat Institutions, support a nation-wide crash programme for the training of community empowerment facilitators at the local level
• Create continuous learning opportunities in the course of the implementation of the CERCAP, such as orientation workshops and focus groups on aspects of the community empowerment processes
• Monitor implementation experience at every level to identify critical skill gaps and to arrange crash programmes to provide minimum levels of process, management and technical skills
• Monitor gender equity issues such as the participation of women, particularly at the local level and in leadership roles
• Disseminate lessons learned and best practices throughout all provinces
• Facilitate exchange visits to demonstration provinces to accelerate learning and innovation

1. Monitor progress with the response to crisis by communities

• Develop a monitoring strategy and schedule to measure community progress in responding to the crisis, based on communities’ self-monitoring reports, collated within provinces and at national level, and other sample studies
• Develop a plan for regular informal monitoring and reporting by the inspectorate in the PMO
• Produce progress reports both in terms of the number of communities that have produced and are implementing crisis-response plans and the cumulative outcome targets of these plans
• Determine the extent to which gender equity is being increased through the community crisis-response plans
• Design a competition scheme in terms of number of empowered communities and the rate of their progress with crisis-response with provincial leagues and national prizes

1. Support the implementation of the CERCAP at provincial and local levels

• Based on regular communications with provincial crisis-response centres and monitoring reports from inspectors and others, determine the pattern of CERCAP implementation across provinces
• Identify implementation obstacles and bottlenecks in particular provinces at specific levels and recommend remedial action to the Secretariat of the CERCAP Sub-committee, or to the provincial governor
• Respond to provincial requests for assistance with the implementation process in terms of orientation, facilitator or Core Team training, information systems, resource problems and technical assistance
• Support the Regional Learning Centres in arranging opportunities for regional sharing of experience by provinces at which best practices could be diffused and obstacles and constraints identified and addressed.
• Support the gender mainstreaming strategy of CERCAP, promoting and facilitating gender equity at all levels.

1. Network with other national actors and foster networking at other levels

• Establish network links with other national crisis-response actors in civil society, the private sector, the media and knowledge institutions
• Encourage networking at the regional, provincial, district and tambon levels, with particular attention to the inclusion and active participation of women’s organizations and groups
• Facilitate sharing of information, lessons learned, best practices and celebrations through all networks
• Bring network concerns, suggestions and major initiatives to the attention of the CERCAP Sub-Committee
• Encourage nodal points to convene key network partners to address common concerns that require face-to-face interaction.

TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR KEY POSITIONS IN THE NCICT

The implementation of these terms of reference will require the full time attention of several people. While most of the work will be done by officials in the MOI, particularly CDD and DOLA, some staff from civil society and the private sector will also be required. Personnel might have to be brought in from outside the government to enhance capacities to foster a culture of community empowerment, to work with the public and the media, to facilitate gender equity, to network with other partners in the private sector and civil society spheres and to bridge the barriers to effective collaboration between different ministries and departments. Four of the critical roles in these areas that would require full-time staffing are:

Community Empowerment Advisor

Gender Equity Facilitator

Social Mobilization Organizer

Communications Advisor

Following are some of the key elements of their terms of reference. Once the composition of the Task Force is known and other roles are more clearly defined, these terms of reference should be reviewed to ensure that they are complementary to other roles and avoid duplication with other positions.

1. Community Empowerment Advisor

Under the direction of the Secretariat of the CERCAP Sub-Committee, and working as a full team member of the NCICT, the Community Empowerment Advisor will assist with the following:

1. The development of a strategy for capacity development for facilitating the empowerment of communities through participatory decision-making processes.
2. Supporting the production of appropriate learning materials for the acquisition of participatory development skills at the local level.
3. Supporting a network of facilitators and change agents in all sectors and encouraging their active support of the empowerment of communities to deal with the impacts of the crisis. The network could be encouraged to develop a Master Facilitator scheme to encourage excellence in community empowerment.
4. Monitoring the effective empowerment of communities and support the dissemination of lessons learned and best practices in facilitating participatory decision-making, analysis, planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.
5. The facilitation of cooperation among all partners in community empowerment, reinforcing a culture of public trust in people’s capacities to manage their own affairs and creating an enabling environment for effective empowerment at all levels.
6. Working with the Regional Learning Centres to remove obstacles to participatory development at the local level, including the filling of critical skill gaps in facilitating the processes.
7. Encouraging gender equity in the facilitation of participatory events, ensuring gender equity in community empowerment facilitator training thus increasing the participation of women in the facilitation and change agent practice.
8. Networking with the partners involved in the work of the Sub-Committee on Changing Attitudes to contribute to a clear understanding of the dynamics of community empowerment and the fostering of a more participatory culture in the public service.

1. Gender Equity Facilitator

Under the direction of the Secretariat of the CERCAP Sub-Committee, and working as a full team member of the NCICT, the Gender Equity Facilitator will assist with the following:

1. The development of a gender mainstreaming strategy, taking into account the decentralized structure and process of CERCAP and the different gender sensitivities at different levels and in different regions.
2. The implementation of the approved strategy.
3. Networking with women’s organizations at the national level and supporting such networks at provincial and intra-provincial levels.
4. The support of the gender equity strategies of partners.
5. Mobilizing public awareness of gender equity issues in dealing with the crisis.
6. Supporting the development of appropriate initiatives and materials to encourage the participation of women at the local level and their emergence into more prominence in leadership roles.
7. Focusing attention on crisis issues affecting girl children and young women.
8. The encouragement of community targets in gender equity in both crisis response and participation in the empowerment processes.

1. Social Mobilization Organizer

Under the direction of the Secretariat of the CERCAP Sub-Committee, and working as a full team member of the NCICT, the Social Mobilization Organizer will assist with the following:

1. The development of a social mobilization strategy that is consistent with the decentralized structure and process of CERCAP and empowers partners at all levels to participate in the mobilization of the society to realize the CERCAP goals.
2. The implementation of the social mobilization strategy approved by the Sub-Committee, particularly the national and regional initiatives, ensuring that they fully empower intra-provincial levels to develop their own social mobilization strategies within the national CERCAP framework.
3. Development and implementation of a networking strategy involving all major partners in crisis response initiatives, promoting the sharing of information and resources, and working together as much as possible in supporting community empowerment for response to the crisis.
4. Supporting and strengthening the nodes of networks at every level, from the national to the local.
5. The arrangement of strategic events at which the Chairperson of the Sub-Committee, Kunying Supatra Masdit, and other members can mobilize support for the CERCAP goals in specific regions or provinces where such support is most needed. Such events would also serve to strengthen national awareness of and commitment to these goals and the CERCAP process.
6. The development of appropriate materials for the mobilization of efforts at all levels, in collaboration with key partners.
7. The design of a league system of friendly competition among local communities, tambons, districts, provinces and municipalities with regard to progress in crisis response and community empowerment. This would include appropriate prizes and celebrations at each level, culminating in a national celebration of the best performances by villages, tambons, districts, provinces and municipalities.
8. The mobilization of the active participation of banks, corporations, foundations and other institutions in offering prizes at all levels for progress in crisis response and community empowerment.
9. Networking with all social mobilization partners, particularly those participating in the monitoring, rewarding and celebration of performance.

1. Communications Advisor

Under the direction of the Secretariat of the CERCAP Sub-Committee, and working as a full team member of the NCICT, the Communications Advisor will assist with the following:

1. The development of a CERCAP communications strategy.
2. The implementation of the communications strategy.
3. Networking with the media at the national level and at those levels involved in the social mobilization activities of the Sub-Committee, particularly the Chairperson.
4. Advising on the creation of media exposure opportunities.
5. The development of appropriate media communication materials, such as success stories, best practices, exceptional achievements and special initiatives in various regions of the country.
6. Encouraging the participation of the media in the promotion and monitoring of CERCAP.
7. Promoting community radio and television programming on crisis response and community empowerment themes and issues, as well as other local media outlets to enhance public awareness.
8. Supporting media coverage in all regional vernaculars.
9. Networking with international media to create regional and global awareness of CERCAP and its achievements.

[Most of these tasks could also be performed on a contract basis by a communications firm with a range of communications skills and products]

V. Monitoring and Evaluation Consultant

Under the direction of the CERCAP Office, and working as a full team member of the Community Empowerment Process Division and the NCICT, the Monitoring and Evaluation Consultant will assist with the following:

1. The development of a monitoring and evaluation strategy, consistent with the community empowerment approach of CERCAP and building on the information gathered by the RLN’s.
2. The development of indicators of local community empowerment in consultation with local communities consisting of behavioural and process measures that they readily understand and accept as valid for measuring the empowerment of the community. (A set of criteria that suggests such indicators is attached.)
3. The development of indicators of the results of the local community plans to deal with the crisis. This could build on the guidelines for local community empowerment, including the key elements of the social impacts of the crisis that are of concern to the NSPC, such as unemployment, loss of income or assets, increased exposure to drugs and HIV/AIDS, school dropouts, and so on. These data on these indicators need to be gathered through the self-monitoring of local communities, the monitoring of the Core Community Support Team and conveyed to higher levels on a regular basis through the one-stop crisis centres or offices.
4. The design of a model for the collation of the data on both sets of indicators at each level so that comprehensive process and result reports are available at the village, tambon, district, province and national levels, and the municipalities.
5. Assistance with the incorporation of the indicators into the MIS of the CERCAP offices so that monitoring indices could be produced at regular intervals, such as quarterly, without the conduct of special surveys or studies, for which the UNDP project does not provide any resources.
6. The implementation of the MIS and the necessary instruments to ensure the quality of the data.
7. The development of a Community Empowerment Index (CEI) and a Crisis Response Result Index (CRRI) that can be used to monitor progress, reward it and celebrate it.
8. The design of a league system of friendly competition among communities within a tambon, a district, a province and the country, with suggestions for the use of the CEI and CRRI and the way in which performance could be judged and rewarded, involving all partners, particularly the private sector.

SUGGESTIONS FOR COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT CRITERIA

It is necessary to define criteria on the basis of which a community would be considered empowered, perhaps along the following lines:

1. The Community has a legitimate, recognized forum for community decision-making, which may be informal.
2. The Community has developed its own plan for dealing with the crisis or with its own development.
3. The Community itself manages the implementation of its plan and monitors and evaluates progress.
4. The Community’s decision-making processes are transparent, open and participatory with accountability to the members of the community.
5. The Community demonstrates effective partnership with all major actors from all spheres and levels.

Appendix 1 to the NSPC-approved CERCAP document also contains suggestions for criteria of empowerment:

Appendix 1:

Elements of Community Empowerment Design

The following elements of sound design of community empowerment will be built into the CERCAP:

1. The local community’s self-steering body (village committee, community general committee, neighbourhood association, TAO/TC, etc.) should be empowered to assume authority for making decisions about the community’s involvement.
2. The community should select or identify its own leaders, change agents, representatives.
3. The community decision-making should be facilitated to be open and participatory, using a simple methodology that it could continue to use in its deliberations and decision-making.
4. The community should be empowered to analyze its own situation with regards to the impact of the crisis, develop its own plan to deal with these impacts and implement the plan itself.
5. Support from higher levels should be enabling and facilitating rather than doing things for the community and should as far as possible be channeled through a holistic support mechanism.
6. The community’s capacities should be strengthened through learning by doing, rather than through special training programmes preceding their participation; capacity development should be in conjunction with practical issues of their management of their own programme, including monitoring.
7. There should be downward or horizontal accountability and transparency built into any support project, for example, by requiring that:

• the persons responsible for managing the budgets be clearly identified,
• the details of the budgets be posted on the community bulletin board and
• regular reports be items on the agenda at community meetings.

1. The chain of command should be empowering to all levels, i.e., the centre empowers provinces, the province empowers districts, the district empowers tambons and the tambon empowers villages in the most complete line of delegation of authority. If any of these are eliminated in a particular province, it should be clearly so established and should be adhered to. In general, the level closest to the community should deal directly with the community.
2. Decisions on allocation of funds to community plans and proposals should be made as close to the community as possible through the clear decentralization of financial authority to the appropriate level, either the tambon or the district. If different levels of authority are involved, e.g., requiring that proposals exceeding a certain amount have to be dealt with at the next level up, these authorities should be clearly spelled out and understood by the community.
3. Community-based and other organizations making proposals on behalf or in the name of a community should be required to demonstrate that the community has endorsed their proposal at an open, participatory community event and that accountability to the community is built into the proposal.

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Dated: 28Jul1999