Inter-American Development Bank
facebook
twitter
youtube
linkedin
instagram
Abierto al públicoBeyond BordersCaribbean Development TrendsCiudades SosteniblesEnergía para el FuturoEnfoque EducaciónFactor TrabajoGente SaludableGestión fiscalGobernarteIdeas MatterIdeas que CuentanIdeaçãoImpactoIndustrias CreativasLa Maleta AbiertaMoviliblogMás Allá de las FronterasNegocios SosteniblesPrimeros PasosPuntos sobre la iSeguridad CiudadanaSostenibilidadVolvamos a la fuente¿Y si hablamos de igualdad?Home
Citizen Security and Justice Creative Industries Development Effectiveness Early Childhood Development Education Energy Envirnment. Climate Change and Safeguards Fiscal policy and management Gender and Diversity Health Labor and pensions Open Knowledge Public management Science, Technology and Innovation  Trade and Regional Integration Urban Development and Housing Water and Sanitation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Caribbean Development Trends

  • HOME
  • CATEGORIES
    • Agribusiness
    • Antigua and Barbuda
    • Barbados
    • BehaviorChange
    • Belize
    • Bermuda
    • biodiversity
    • Blockchain
    • Caribbean
    • Caribbean Culture and Media
    • Climate Change
    • Creative Economy
    • Crime Prevention and Citizen Security
    • Data and Knowledge
    • De-risking
    • Dominica
    • Dutch
    • Early Childhood Development
    • Economic Growth
    • Education Policy
    • energy
    • entrepreneurship
    • Environmental and Climate Change
    • Events
    • Extractives
    • Finance
    • Fiscal Rules
    • gender
    • Governance and Regulatory Policy Reforms
    • Grenada
    • Guyana
    • Haiti
    • Health
    • Health Policy
    • Hurricane
    • Hurricane Irma
    • infrastructure
    • Innovation and change
    • Intellectual Property
    • IWD
    • Jamaica
    • JumpCaribbean
    • Labor
    • Labour Markets
    • MOOC
    • Music
    • Natural Disasters
    • Nurturing Institutions
    • OECS
    • Podcast
    • Poverty
    • Private Sector and Entrepreneurship
    • Saint Kitts and Nevis
    • Saint Lucia
    • Saint Vincent and Grenadines
    • skills
    • Sports for Development
    • Suriname
    • Technology
    • The Bahamas
    • The Blue Economy
    • Transportation
    • Tourism
    • Trinidad and Tobago
    • Uncategorized
    • VAWG
    • Webinar
    • women
    • Women for Change
    • youth
  • Country Offices
    • Bahamas
    • Barbados
    • Guyana
    • Jamaica
    • Suriname
    • Trinidad and Tobago
  • Press Releases
    • Bahamas
    • Barbados
    • Guyana
    • Jamaica
    • Suriname
    • Trinidad and Tobago
  • Authors

How community involvement contributes to inclusive program delivery in Guyana

June 30, 2022 by Derise Williams - Ravena Gildharie Leave a Comment


Engaging beneficiary communities in program planning and coordination is key for inclusive and sustainable development. In Guyana where urban and hinterland settlements scatter across 83,000 square miles, meaningful engagements require careful strategies that consider cultural and geographical diversities. Given that most indigenous peoples live in the sparsely populated hinterland, programs rely upon the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) policies and approaches for engaging indigenous peoples. The IDB’s Vision 2025 prioritizes social inclusion and equality as critical to COVID-19 recovery in the region. Incorporating all these values in creative methods, project teams are achieving results with strong inputs from communities.

In a recent dialogue supported by IDB Country Office in Guyana, the project implementing teams discussed how their experiences, lessons learned, and best practices are shaping the participatory model for development programs in Guyana.

Community Engagement for Inclusive Programs: Adding Value

“Our experiences have shown that community engagements can reap several benefits, savings, wider community change, even changes in family dynamics and lend itself well to overall success of any implementation,” says Donell Bess-Bascom, Deputy Director of Community Development at the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA). The CH&PA has implemented four (4) IDB-funded programs since 2000 to improve the livability of Guyanese through adequate and affordable housing and upgrade of social and physical infrastructure.

“We have seen engagements with communities throughout the process, from initiation to close out…We have had the privilege of being able to engage entire communities…in developing, designing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating of programs.”

From Guyana’s Sustainable Housing Program, the CH&PA institutionalized a participatory method for building houses in the hinterland. Subsidies catered for full construction of core homes and for the upgrade of roofs. During participatory workshops, indigenous communities designed housing solutions to meet beneficiary satisfaction and reduce the risk of health issues associated with overheated living spaces, especially for the elderly, children, and pregnant women. Design modifications resulted in savings and more beneficiaries were added to the program. Approximately 424 households across 28 indigenous communities benefited.  

“Through those processes, we learned that communities in the hinterland have excellent building skills,” Donnell says. “They have indigenous building materials that work very well and are very durable. They have community systems that have been functioning for years effectively and we were able to use those to be able to design the project. They were able to design what their houses should look like, told us what materials we should build, how to monitor, how to supervise.”

Similarly, Women’s Safety Audits, supported by Women in Cities International,  engaged groups of women in Sophia and La Parfaite Harmonie communities to identify improvements that can make them feel safer. Results led to interventions that include installation of street lighting, construction of multi-purpose facilities, and redesign of bridges.

Community Engagement for Effective Program Delivery: Supporting sustainability

In sectors like Energy where programs often face resistance from beneficiaries, the Guyana Power and Light Inc. relies on social engagements to build public confidence and ‘buy-in.’ The IDB-European Union co-financed Power Utility Upgrade Program (PUUP) which introduces smart meters among interventions to help reduce and control high electricity losses, engaged almost 4900 stakeholders in 176 communities across four (4) regions of Guyana. The Project Executing Unit (PEU) uses flexible approaches, even if it means traveling into distant rice fields for small group dialogue with rural farmers or conducting iterative follow-ups to manage conflicts. With the risks of face-to-face interactions during COVID-19, the team turned to radio programs to maintain close coordination among stakeholders.

Chitra Singh, PUUP’s Social Management Coordinator says, “If you have (buy-in), you can be able to treat conflict management in a better way. You can be able to negotiate terms better. If you don’t have that, it has the effect of sabotaging, halting, or even hindering the project going forward.”

Project teams recognize including local ambassadors and interest groups can help to correct inaccurate preconceived mindsets among stakeholders and support the sustainability of interventions.  Sharing responsibilities with communities enables beneficiaries to take ownership. Several programs including in health and housing currently involve community-based project committees. Engagements during design and prior implementation are useful to align interventions with development plans and expectations of the communities and beneficiaries.

Inclusive results

While best practices of other countries and programs inform techniques, engagements are more effective when adapted to the local context, says Dr. Serena Bender-Pelswijk, Health Systems Specialist for the program, Support to Improve Maternal and Child Health.

“There were designs that we were offered based on what other countries would have done, and we took the time to find out from (the communities) is this something that you’re comfortable with? Or is there something that you would like to see included in this project? Or would you like us to do it this way versus that way? It involved a lot of tweaking and making it unique to the needs of that community.”

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is health-5b-1024x768.jpg

To reduce maternal, perinatal, and neonatal deaths, interventions are improving the quality, use, and access to reproductive maternal and child health services. In doing so, communities are involved in knowledge-sharing and capacity building through mentorship and coaching. This element of community involvement is important to reach beneficiaries in remote hinterland villages where the rate of home deliveries is high and given that indigenous peoples communicate in their own languages. Moreover, it can support a timely and efficient grievances redress mechanism considering the vast geographical distance between PEU and beneficiaries.

The program trained approximately 250 community volunteers and community health workers. Sixteen (16) health committees were also set up from 2019 to 2021 in Guyana’s hinterland Rupununi region. These committees support other health issues existing in the communities such as COVID-19.

The IDB’s new Environmental and Social Policy Framework incorporates stakeholder engagement as a priority for development programs and these policies are being adopted by local implementing agencies across Guyana. Many projects include mandatory requirements for the inclusion of all project stakeholders including local authorities, whether they are directly affected by the program or simply have an interest. Requirements cater to the design and execution phases, and these requirements are monitored and evaluated to ensure adequate consultations, grievance redress mechanisms, social inclusion, and gender diversity. Some of these include considerations for the involvement of women, youths, indigenous people, minority groups, and people with disabilities. We are confident that community involvement will continue to result in inclusive program delivery in Guyana.


Filed Under: Dialogue & Community Engagement

Derise Williams

Derise Williams is a multi-skilled project management professional with over 18 years of experience working at the Inter-American Development Bank and Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce in Guyana. She is currently an Operations Senior Associate at the Bank’s Country Office in Guyana supporting development projects in Energy, Housing, Fiscal Management and Innovation for Citizens while also working on initiatives to improve execution and strengthen the capacity of clients. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Post Graduate Diploma in Development Studies from the University of Guyana and a Master’s Degree in Project Management from the University of the West Indies.

Ravena Gildharie

Ravena Gildharie is a Communications Consultant at the Inter-American Development Bank Guyana Country Office, where she concentrates on fostering public awareness on the IDB, its strategies, operations, and vision for the region. She also holds responsibility for engagements and dialogue with civil society in Guyana supporting the Bank’s processes for inclusive consultations, collaborations, and knowledge exchange with stakeholders. Ravena has previous experience in public relations, development communications, and journalism.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us

Subscribe

Search

Caribbean Dev Trends

We provide unique and timely insights on the Caribbean and its political, social, and economic development. At the IDB, we strive to improve lives in the Caribbean by creating vibrant and resilient economies where people are safe, productive and happy.

Similar posts

  • Ensuring a healthy living environment through low-income housing solutions
  • A Story of Change through perseverance
  • Finding the key to affordable homes: 4 lessons learned from public interventions in the Caribbean
  • Are you listening?
  • Building a Future Without Poverty: Suriname’s Path to Inclusive Growth

Footer

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo
facebook
twitter
youtube
youtube
youtube

    Blog posts written by Bank employees:

    Copyright © Inter-American Development Bank ("IDB"). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. (CC-IGO 3.0 BY-NC-ND) license and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose. No derivative work is allowed. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC- IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.


    For blogs written by external parties:

    For questions concerning copyright for authors that are not IADB employees please complete the contact form for this blog.

    The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDB, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.

    Attribution: in addition to giving attribution to the respective author and copyright owner, as appropriate, we would appreciate if you could include a link that remits back the IDB Blogs website.



    Privacy Policy

    Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

    Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo

    Aviso Legal

    Las opiniones expresadas en estos blogs son las de los autores y no necesariamente reflejan las opiniones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, sus directivas, la Asamblea de Gobernadores o sus países miembros.

    facebook
    twitter
    youtube