India is one among the eighty-three countries globally, which operates the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) administered by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). SGP India became operational in September 1997. After the Pilot Phase and Operational Phase I and II, now the SGP is in its third operational phase (2005-2008).

Overall responsibility of SGP in India rests with the National Steering Committee (NSC), which comprises representatives from the Government of India, UNDP, NGOs and academicians. The programme is being implemented (since September 2000) by the National Host Institution � Centre for Environment Education (CEE).

The SGP in India has the following objectives:

• Promotes innovative local responses that reduces threats to the global environment in one or more of the five thematic areas � biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, protection of international waters, prevention of land degradation and phasing out of persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
• Builds capacities of experts, self and communities on issues and concerns for sustainable local initiatives.
• Demonstrates the effectiveness and potential for wider application of small-scale, decentralized, community based initiatives leading to local entrepreneurships;
• Generate learning's from the community based initiatives and support the spread of successful approaches and methodologies;
• Creating public awareness and advocacy on global environmental issues.

The potential courses of action that could be supported under operational phase III will include actions that could be taken to ameliorate the threat and to ensure that the biodiversity/ international water body/natural resource or energy base of global significance be conserved or rehabilitated or, in the case of energy, reduced to sustainable levels of use and management. This step helps to identify a SGP intervention that would deal with the threat and contribute to eliminating it. 'A carefully thought-out project concept or proposal, by following this reasoning, makes explicit the link between the proposed intervention and potential global environmental benefit, by focusing on benefits in the GEF focal areas, which meet both global conventions and local objectives.' The SGP will also identify proactively project themes, which CBOs/NGOs can consider when they develop their own project concepts/proposals and ideas.

Monitoring and Evaluation

The SGP-India views monitoring and evaluation as an ongoing participatory process, which enables enhancement of skills, understanding and applying lessons learned from the projects� experiences. SGP-India has, from the beginning, insisted to project partners to incorporate clearly defined indicators of performance in all projects. This is a way of promoting learning among the involved and getting their views on the progress of the project. Participatory monitoring and evaluation involves stakeholders and beneficiaries in the collective examination and assessment of a project. Moreover it is people centered: Project stakeholders and beneficiaries are the key actors of the evaluation process and not merely 'objects' of the evaluation.

Stakeholders are groups that have a role and interest in the objectives and implementations of a project

The SGP provides a flexible window to meet the unforeseen circumstances and time extensions which are possible to happen in projects. The NGO's and CBO's as implementing partner therefore need to be led by more genuine concern on a 'process driven approach' rather than a targeted way of working, leading to better empowerment at the grassroots level.

All project proposals will also be required to present a �Risk Analysis� stating the critical assumptions and external factors upon which the achievement of project objective depends.

Each field project partner whose project is approved and functioning is required to submit Quarterly Progress Reports (QPR). These QPRs will also identify any assistance needed by project partners in the form of technical, social, financial or other inputs that were not foreseen at the time of preparing the project report. The National Coordinators (NC) and Regional Coordinators (RC) will, to the extent possible, arrange for provision of these inputs and provide advice on any mid-course corrections needed.