Innovation in water

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Jonathan Brooks, Managing Director for Europe, Asia, Pacific, and Latin America

A community irrigation system created with the help of MCC’s compact with Honduras recently received international recognition—the latest example of how MCC’s investments provide a model for sustainable poverty growth in our partner countries.

The Cosechas de Agua rainwater harvesting project, developed through the compact’s Agricultural Public Goods Grant Facility and managed by CHF International, received the Latin American prize for innovative water management projects in the face of climate change at the World Water Forum in Marseille, France, on March 15.

Cosechas de Agua harvests rainwater for use in irrigation in the arid southern municipalities of Nacaome, Langue, Goascorán, and Aramecina. It captures rainwater and then uses a system of hydraulic works, dams and pipelines to store and distribute the water to fields. The project aims to introduce complementary irrigation systems for 188 agricultural producers over 98 hectares of land, intended to increase their income.

Access to irrigation and other support through the compact was intended to allow farmers to diversify their crops, increase their yields and expand their access to new customers nationally, regionally and internationally.

The $50,000 prize—sponsored by the Mexican national water authority Conagua, the FEMSA Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Water Center for Latin America and the Caribbean—will be used to develop the project over the next three years. Cosechas de Agua officials will also be invited to present progress on the system's economic, social and environmental impacts at the next World Water Forum in March 2015.

The Agricultural Public Goods Grant Facility was part of the $68 million Rural Development Project, which sought to increase the productivity and business skills of farmers who operate small- and medium-size farms, as well as their employees. The project is expected to help more than 357,000 people over the next 20 years and raise their household incomes by $53 million.

 

A resource for Armenia’s future

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Jonathan Brooks, Managing Director for Europe, Asia, Pacific, and Latin America

Although MCC's compact with Armenia closed at the end of September, the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan is ensuring the lessons we learned during our five-year partnership can improve the country’s future development projects.

The embassy’s new MCC Resource Center makes information regarding MCC’s $177 million investment available as a reference for future U.S. Government development projects, Armenians from the diaspora interested in building upon compact projects and others. The center includes an array of documents like farmer-training maps, public outreach documents, quarterly bulletins, and training materials.

The MCC Resource Center also provides embassy staff and visitors with information on MCA-Armenia’s successor, the Foreign Financed Projects Management Center (FFPMC). An FFPMC team led the compact development process, and we are pleased that they are involved again by helping monitor MCC’s investments over the next few years.

In Zambia, MCC’s newest compact brings clean water and improved sanitation and drainage services to more than one million residents

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Raja Kaul, MCC Resident Country Director, Zambia

Pictured: Residents of Zambia's capital city of Lusaka wait in line to gather water at a public fountain.

Last Thursday, the MCC Board of Directors approved a $355 million compact with Zambia that focuses on the water sector in Lusaka. MCC investments are expected to have a significant impact on the lives of more than one million Lusaka residents by improving their health and economic productivity and helping the country reduce poverty on a sustainable basis. Fittingly, the Board’s decision fell on the annual UN-designated World Water Day.

This single-sector compact aims to address one of the Zambia’s most binding constraints to economic growth through infrastructure investment in the rapidly urbanizing capital city of Lusaka. It is designed to reduce the incidence and prevalence of water-related disease, decrease the number of productive days lost due to disease and time to collect water, lower costs of water and new sanitation, and reduce flood losses for businesses and residential homes.

In addition to investments in water supply, sanitation and drainage infrastructure, MCC’s integrated investment will also support the government’s ongoing water sector reform efforts by strengthening responsible institutions. The investment is expected to significantly benefit Lusaka’s poor, as 73 percent of the more than one million Zambian beneficiaries currently have incomes below $2 per day. 

The Zambia compact will promote key MCC corporate priorities, including gender and social integration, environmental and social impact assessments, and private sector development. In the Zambia compact, social and gender integration is prioritized, and activities are designed to extend project benefits to women and vulnerable groups. 

Since its inception in 1993, World Water Day has served to spotlight the global challenge to provide safe water and sanitation services to those living in poverty. So far, MCC has invested $793 million in WASH-related projects in nine partner countries, and MCC’s compacts with Cape Verde, Jordan, and Mozambique, like Zambia, focus primarily on water sector development. Our growing WASH portfolio reflects our partner countries’ recognition of the important role of access to clean, affordable, and reliable water in promoting economic growth.

For more information on MCC’s water and sanitation projects, visit www.mcc.gov/water.

MCC Celebrates International Women’s Day

Posted on March 8, 2012 by MCC, Washington, DC

 

At MCC, we believe empowering men, women, boys, and girls is critical to sustainable poverty reduction.

MCC is committed to ensuring that gender is considered in all stages of its work with partner countries, from country selection and policy reform to project development and implementation.

Today, we published an updated fact sheet, "MCC's Commitment to Gender Equality."

Andria Hayes-Birchler in MCC's Department of Policy and Evaluation posted a blog entry about MCC's new "Gender in the Economy" indicator, which builds on MCC’s groundbreaking Gender Policy by recognizing the relationship between growth, poverty reduction and gender equality..

We also published a story about Emilia Kambonde, a rural farmer in Namibia who is taking advantage of an MCC compact program to export her community's indigenous natural products to global markets.

In the slideshow above, real people—MCC beneficiaries, employees, and MCA staff—share their views on gender equality. We want to hear from you, too: Leave your comments below.

Building Community through Development

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Cassandra Q. Butts, Senior Advisor

Grade school students and teachers of the Bacjao Elementary School in Balangiga, Samar welcome MCC and MCA-Philippines teams on February 28, 2012. The public school is a recipient of two classrooms from the KALAHI-CIDSS project implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

I was in the province of Leyte in the Philippines on Tuesday to witness the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by the municipality of Alang-Alang to begin participating in an innovative approach to development called Kalahi-CIDSS, which is included in the country’s MCC compact. Kalahi-CIDSS is a community-based approach to development that makes beneficiaries active participants in the selection, design and implementation of development projects that they believe are best for their communities.

While Kalahi-CIDSS isn't original to MCC—the program originally was funded in the Philippines by the World Bank—MCC's investment of $120 million will double the size and scale of the program and make it available to communities like Alang-Alang for the first time. MCC is also adding innovations in areas such as gender integration and environmental assessment, impact evaluation and engineering standards that will enhance the value of the program to beneficiaries as well as improve the sustainability of outcomes.

The hope is that Alang-Alang will find the same success with the program as the municipality of Balangiga experienced when it used Kalahi-CIDSS to build schools, a retaining wall to protect against typhoon flooding, a community road, and a bridge. Viscuso de Lira, the mayor of Balangiga, describes the Kalahi-CIDSS program as galvanizing community engagement in a way that had not been achieved before and building community support for sustaining projects that are the product of their own initiative and sweat equity.

MCC and the Millennium Challenge Account-Philippines are further using Kalahi-CIDSS to empower communities in a coordinated campaign against trafficking in persons, seeking to educate Kalahi-CIDSS communities as well as other communities impacted by our road project in the Samar region on preventing this global crime.

Kalahi-CIDSS is not only building and empowering communities but also promoting the principles of transparency and accountability in how development resources are used. This approach can be critical in improving local government at all levels of engagement.