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Mobilizing Nepali Youth for Community Service
FrontLines - September 2009
By Sven Lindholm
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C
itizens in the village of Bara in Nepal’s Terai district discuss priorities.
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Challenge
In 2006, after 10 years of Maoist insurgency and political
upheaval, Nepal began a transition to peace and democracy.
An election in April 2008 resulted in a transitional Constituent Assembly that would draft a new constitution. Hopes and expectations for peace, security, and development
were high.
However, efforts to write the constitution have bogged down in political infighting, and government efforts to bring services to underserved areas of the country have had limited success. Large parts of the country outside the capital, Kathmandu, are facing volatile security situations. But change has begun.
Since 2006, USAID has worked with a variety of Nepalese community and civil society groups to increase local participation to broaden and deepen Nepal’s budding democratic culture.
Responding to the rise of ethnic politics and increasing lawlessness in the Eastern and Central Terai districts near the Indian frontier, the Agency’s program shifted to community stabilization activities, looking
at ways to motivate youth to invest time and energy in small-scale community development
projects.
Innovative Response
USAID began supporting local NGO partners in the Terai to establish Youth Mobilization Committees (YMCs) in hundreds
of villages across the region where the trend toward joining armed groups was most prominent. The idea was to engage youth around a common
objective that would help weaken the social and cultural barriers that cause conflict.
The YMCs worked with their communities to select projects. The relatively low budget of these activities largely escaped political party influence and funding was seen as non-political, so communities could have a real say in the projects they wanted without fighting the local bureaucracy.
Results
Some 125,000 youth participated
in the program, including
4,000 as YMC members. Activities included reconstruction
of community libraries and early childhood development centers; and rehabilitation of roads, health posts, and schools.
Communities in the lowland Terai place a high value on these activities. In many villages, they were the first projects to take place in several years. Youth have been involved at all stages.
Community and local government contributions in matching funds and labor nearly doubled USAID’s investment, totaling 11 million Nepalese rupees (nearly $144,000).
Although the communities had few resources to pitch in, community enthusiasm generated protection as well as civic and financial support. Development of budgets by the YMCs and the community ensured transparency, and in turn led to pressure for greater accountability in local government
budgets.
The positive initial response led USAID to expand its youth-led, small-scale infrastructure work in the Terai, spending nearly $1 million
in additional funding from the Department of Defense and the Agency. That helped spread these activities into 460 villages of central and eastern Terai, in a period when the threat of violence was high.
In many cases, YMCs approached local officials to secure government funding for larger development projects. For example, in a village of Siraha District, the community
and local government officials were so pleased with the YMC’s work that the local government planned to fund its own projects through existing
YMCs.
Today, many YMCs are still active in their communities.
Some have become community watchdogs to ensure that local development funding from the government is appropriately spent. Others have assumed community leadership roles.
The lessons learned from these programs are being incorporated into USAID’s longer-term stabilization program
in Nepal.
★
FrontLines is published
by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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