The Community Driven Recovery and Development (CDRD) programme is founded on participatory principles involving the whole community in identifying, deciding, implementing and monitoring the development needed. CDRD treats the beneficiaries as assets and partners in the development process, building on their own institutions and resources. Experience has shown that with access to information and appropriate support, communities can be effectively organised to provide the goods and services that meet their needs. Not only do communities have greater capacity than generally recognised, they also have the most to gain from making good use of resources targeted at poverty reduction.

The advantage of CDRD is that it targets aid better at the local level and that stronger ownership among users and beneficiaries helps promote self-financing and sustainability. At the same time, a community-driven approach helps strengthen and build local institutions as a basis for good governance and stability. It also helps build social capital locally by making it possible for community members to work together to identify their common problems and to implement projects together that address critical social needs.

Objectives of the CDRD programme
The CDRD project hopes to build a community which will be self-propelling with people actively participating in activities that will improve their lives. In support of this vision, the CDRD programme wishes to achieve the following objectives:

• To meet community development needs by providing a social and economic infrastructure.
• To empower communities by enabling them to freely exercise their right to decide on the design, implementation and evaluation of their own development programmes. Emphasis is given to women, youth and vulnerable groups by ensuring their inclusion in the consultation and decision-making process, especially in selecting and prioritising subprojects.
• To promote bottom-up governance development and to build the capacity of local government to be able to take over the function and responsibility of helping communities to help themselves.

Community Targeting
The DRC CDRD project's vision for 2011 is to support up to 15 refugee hosting communities from four districts in Somali region of Ethiopia. The targeted communities are jointly identified by the district administration and DRC against agreed criteria. The criteria includes that the community is highly vulnerable and marginalised with very limited livelihood option and is significantly affected by the impact of hosting refugee.

So far, 8 communities have benefited from the programme. The average population of a community is 300 household. In total, more than 12,000 people are estimated to be befitting from the programme either directly or indirectly.

6 primary ABE schools and one health post have been constructed with the community taking part in the selection as well as the construction of the projects. The local government is equipping and staffing the projects to give the desired service to the community.

CDRD project Cycle
The selected CDRD communities undergo a participatory integrated community development (PICD) training for a period of 15 to 20 days in which the different segments of the community such as the elders, women, youth and people from different clans come together to identify their core needs by developing a Community Action Plan (CAP). The CAP identifies the five most needed developments within the community. In addition, the community elects a Community Development Committee (CDC) which task mainly is to mobilise the community and engaging in the implementation and monitoring of the CAP. The communities also elect different kinds of committees like procurement committee, monitoring and evaluation committee and maintenance sub-committee.

The developed CAP will be reviewed and consolidated with the district plan before the implementation of the first priority starts.

Communities especially the CDC are also trained in financial management and procurement procedure, in order for the community to execute the project by themselves. Furthermore, the communities will have a bank account near their village where they deposit their savings. DRC mainly assist communities in financing their first priority by providing a community managed grant of approx. USD 15,000. Importantly the community must contribute at least 20% of the activity cost. This can be through cash or e.g. construction materials. In addition, DRC is providing training to the communities on how to mobilise themselves and implement the remaining priorities.