The GEF, UNDP Small Grants Programme, India
Retreat at Shilpi Resort, Near Shilpgram Udaipur
14th January-17th January, 2009, Udaipur, Rajasthan,
India
Workshop Report Acronym
CCF
Country Cooperation Framework
CDI Capacity
Development Initiative
CDM Clean Development
Mechanism
CEE
Centre for Environment Education
GEF Global
Environment Facility
GHG Green House Gases
GOI Government
of India
KBPA Kaun Banega Bharat ka Paryavaran Ambassador
M& E Monitoring & Evaluation
MoEF Ministry of Environment & Forest
NC
National Coordinator
NGO Non Governmental Organization
NHI National Host Institution
NSC National Steering
Committee
RAF Resource Allocation Framework
RCs Regional
Coordinators
SGP Small Grants
Programme
SOPs Standard Operating Procedures
UC
Utilization Certificate
UNDAF United Nations Development
Assistance Framework
UNDP United Nations
Development Programme
Objective:
-
Analyse
the efforts, output and impacts of SGP India programme
and to discuss future strategies
-
Create
a common understanding among the SGP team towards
various aspects and issues of the Small Grants Programme,
India
-
Share
experiences of the Journey of SGP India so far and
looking ahead
Participants: The
SGP India retreat provided a platform bringing the SGP India
team together from various part of India, to provide a common
platform for cross sharing of learning’s and experiences. Mr.
Hem Pande, (Joint Secretary, MoEF, GOI) was the chief guest of
the event. He is also the GEF focal point and the chairman of
the National Steering Committee (NSC) of SGP India. Mr.
Kartikeya Sarabhai (Director, CEE and head of the NHI), Mr.
Prabhjot Sodhi, National Coordinator of SGP India, Mr. Anil
Arora (Senior Programme officer, UNDP India) Ms. Mehfuza Rehman
& Mr. BMS Rathore (respected members of the NSC), Ms. Nayanika
Singh (GEF consultant, India), SGP Regional Coordinators from
the 7 regional cells, team members of SGP secretariat and few
SGP partners from western pats of India participated in the
workshop. Ms. Rixa Schwarz (Programme Officer, CEE Germany), Ms.
Kiran Choker (Programme Director, CEE Delhi) and Mr. Richard
Clugston (CEE U.S.A) were special invitees to the workshop)
Methodology:
The workshop was planned in a participatory manner, where each
lead presentation was followed by a question-answer round and
open discussion.
Proceedings:
Day I: 14th January, 2009
The first day
of the workshop started with a welcome dinner. This was an
informal event and served the purpose of ice-breaking. At this
event Mr. Hem Pande was introduced to the SGP India team, NSC
members and special invitees from MoEF, CEE and SGP partners
from western region. During his initial interaction with the SGP
partners, Mr. Pande got a chance to look into and understand the
SGP programme more deeply as he was exposed to people who are
directly working at the grassroots.
Day II: 15th January, 2009
Session I
The formal sessions started on the
IInd day of the workshop with a welcome note followed by an
interactive session which was designed to understand the
expectations of the participants from the workshop. This session
was facilitated by NC. Following are some of the points on which
participants expected to have discussions and clarifications:
-
Knowing
the financial Systems IFSC, SWIFT Codes etc.-
-
Delay
in payments
-
Convergence and SGP & KBPA
-
Graduation policy – GEF Council sharing
-
IFC
issue – display for SGP concepts/ SOP
-
Developing the strategies for formal sharing of
information/ knowledge
-
Solution exchange of UNDP in local languages
-
Graduation policy- how SGP Countries graduated-
communities or the Programme
-
Sending
agenda of NSC to RCs
-
SGP
projects- eco-system wise or landscapes
-
Inter-exchange in RCm
-
How can
we partner with other donors? – Technology exchange –
DFID, GTZ, CRS etc.
-
Convergence of best practices (of farmers )
Session
II
Before the
formal inauguration of the workshop, two of the SGP partners
from western India- Sahyoga Sansthan and Prayatna Samiti
shared their project activities and impacts created.
-
Sahayoga Sansthan:
The SGP partner is working on the project titled
‘Comprehensive Model of
Biodiversity Management in the Aravali mountain Ranges
in Bhindar block, Udaipur district,
Rajasthan.’ Mr. Heeralal sharma, who is the
in-charge of the project shared details on this project.
The NGO undertook this project to establish a
comprehensive model of biodiversity conservation and
management by strengthening people’s institutions to
sustain conservation efforts. Their major activities
included development and protection of pasturelands -
common and private; development of individual private
plots, plantation and seed sowing, construction of dry
stone masonry boundary wall and construction of
check-dams for effective soil water conservation in
upstream areas of watershed. Through pastureland
development, they hoped that increased production of
grass would help farmers start dairy activities that
would provide them additional income. To further
strengthen this process, they undertook to set up and
strengthen milk collection centers and aid some
families, purchase breed animals with support from the
bank. In addition, the project aimed to construct low
cost water harvesting structures to recharge some wells
for irrigation and renovate some old wells with good
potential for water. Finally, they also focused on
promoting mutual learning and sharing experiences with
other like-minded agencies and successful programmes
through exposure tours.
Mr. Shrama
explained that the project activities are going on in 5 villages
in Udaipur district and has benefited nearly 70-80% of
marginalized population in which 50% fall below poverty line.
Generation of alternate income source through livestock rearing
and linkages to the market is an important component of the
project. He said that towards project’s better implementation
and to ensure its sustainability we are looking at convergence
with existing Government programmes as well.
After the
presentation, Mr. Pande expressed his interest in knowing the
co-financing of the project, which was shared by PSS and Mr.
Heeralal. Details are as follows-
INR 50 thousand from dairy
INR 50 Lakh from wells community of India
INR 5 47 000 from -------------
INR 671000 from bank Loan
Prayatna Samiti:
Mr. Mohan Dangi
from Prayatna Samiti shared his experiences on two projects of
the GEF UNDP Small Grants Programme. While sharing the
experiences from the Jaisamand Catchment area, he showed how new
technologies like Google image could be useful in planning &
designing a project. While sharing the impacts created by the
project he said that the project activities has helped in soil
life sustenance in the area, water harvesting structures in the
area helped increase moisture retention in soil providing better
survival chances for small creatures and increased water
availability in wells and streams.
Pasture land protection increased fodder availability enhancing
animal husbandry and
increased Livelihood options.
He also shared the goal, objective and expected output from the
second project approved under the Small Grants Programme. This
project titled “Evolving a livelihood and ecological security
based approach for revitalization of Makradi river basin” aims
to enhance the role of community in improving biodiversity of
the Jaisamand Catchments and reducing vulnerability against
shocks like erratic rainfall and drought.
After these two
presentations from the SGP partners, Mr. Sodhi formally welcomed
all the participants to the workshop. He extended his warm
welcome to Mr. Hem Pande and thanked him for making it to the
workshop despite his busy schedule.
After discussing the purpose of the workshop, Mr. Sodhi then
presented a background of SGP as well as introduced participants
with the UNDP CO CDI project. He also shared some of the good
efforts done by the SGP partners in different thematic and
geographical areas as well as entrepreneur networks established
by them.
Kartikeya
Sarabhai (KVS), shared his experiences with the SGP and the way
forward. He told about the unique partnerships involved in the
Small Grants programme. He showed his concern on the clarity of
selection criteria of proposals, at the level of RC and NSC. He
said that the wavelength of RC and NSC should be the same. He
said that if a NSC member chairs the RCM then it could be
helpful in bridging this gap. He said that to reduce this gap we
have to look at many aspects and one of the important point is
to improve the quality of documentation by the NGO. He also
said that we need to find out the champions for scaling up
projects. He said that every project completed should get an
appropriate opportunity to make presentations on its project to
funding sources, so that to judge the potential to scale up
project activities. He suggested that to start with we should
have 75 presentations of completed SGP projects from different
geographic and thematic areas. This is to identify projects to
be upscaled/replicated. He also stressed on knowledge sharing
and creating a knowledge centre, to share the case studies from
SGP India among south Asian countries. Establishing knowledge
centres could play as a new role for graduating/upgraded
countries. He said that it is a challenge for the SGP to
mainstream state government into this programme, so that they
feel more like a stakeholder in this programme.
Mr. Anil Arora
from UNDP was then invited to share UNDPs experiences on the
Journey of SGP India so far. He said that he is associated with
SGP from 2001 and has seen SGP growing from infancy. He shared
UNDP's role in activities of the Small Grants Programme, since
1997 and the support received from MoEF in enlarging its scope
year-after-year for up-scaling of projects.
This is clubbed with funding under CCF-I and CPAP and also the
support provided to Water Small Grants. The UNDP values
the innovative work done by NGOs in different parts of the
country. With the catalytic role played by SGP this
work, when has a scope of replication elsewhere, and is
supported by co-funding and Government-level initiatives can
make a huge difference to the lives of the communities.
While the GEF/SGP is a nation-wide programme, the UNDP funding
is to support initiatives in the seven UNDAF States and should
have strong component of community benefit rather than just
global GHG emission reduction related interventions.
SGP is the only programme of UNDP where we are doing direct fund
disbursements to NGOs. UNDP stressed that the serious
analysis and the quality of proposals is the key to the success
of this programme. Sometimes, the proposals are not
presented/explained/understood by the NSC members. The RCs
should either support adequate elaborations or present the
proposals of sensitive nature in person. Kartikeya
Sarabhai suggested that we can place to the next NSC for their
consideration if tele-conference arrangement can be made between
the RC/NGO and NSC members to seek clarifications.
UNDP informed
that we can provide a strong institution capacity building role
to strengthen the Programme. We did organize five
Awareness Workshops in the year 2000-2001 and if any need is
felt to organize similar such workshops to popularize the SGP
Programme to seek quality proposals, we can look at the budget
if a scope is possible in CDI project. SGP should
also look at proposals that link the "Research to Application"
rather than looking at the standard thematic focal points of
GEF.
On the
Graduation policy of Small Grants Programme, UNDP suggested if
CEE could take up the Solution Exchange type role and provide
assistance to Global Network. Anil said that, if any
help is needed, we can expose them to our Solution Exchange team
in Delhi.
After this
presentation, Mr. Hem Pande was invited to share his views and
the support of MoEF to the Small Grants Programme.He appreciated
the efforts of Mr. Sodhi in taking the SGP this far and assured
full support of MoEF to the SGP. He informed that the SGP
should establish more partnership and co-financing.
From MoEF side he assured that there is no shortage of funds for
good proposals. For GEF RAF-5, no proposals have
been received so far. If SGP has a good pipeline,
let us have a proper vision towards SGP and funds can be
accessed from RAF-5 in advance. He showed his great interest and
concern in programmes like "Make Aravali Green" in a mission
mode and link it to livelihood and his Ministry will be keen to
support such an initiative. The SGP should devise
some methods to link up Private Sector to promote certain "Green
money type" initiatives as a part of their Corporate Social
Responsibility. He informed that the GEF at Headquarters
level is reviewing the Climate Fund and some changes are
envisaged. We do not know how the funds will be
channeled to the countries. We will have to have a "Wait
and Watch" policy till GEF Secretariat announces their policies
clearly.
Mr. Pande also
stressed on community level planning of projects, involvement of
local institutions like panchayat and municipalities and
effective monitoring and evaluation process. He said that now we
should plan to develop medium scale projects and not limit
ourselves to small scale projects.
Session III
Afternoon
session started at 1400 hrs and was designed for more focused
and thematic discussions.
Resource Allocation Framework (RAF):
Mr. Sodhi started the afternoon session by sharing the details
on the RAF strategy. The context and the concept of RAF was made
clear to participants and it was informed that the India RAF
strategy is endorsed by the NSC, MoEF and the GEF headquarters
and also informed that strategy for M& E , knowledge management
and networking is required. It was decided to send the final RAF
strategy to all the RCs. While talking on the fund allocation it
was informed that under the RAF, USD 10,00,000 has been
allocated for projects on biodiversity and USD 14,00,000 under
Climate Change. It is also decided that all the projects
focusing on land degradation would be considered under
biodiversity and projects focusing on reduction of PoPs would be
considered under Climate Change. It was informed that RCs should
take proper care while filling the information in the summary
sheet and very clearly mention that under which grant (RAF/UNDP
CO/ MoEF) it should be considered. It was also informed that
under RAF there is still a balance of USD 1.310 million to be
used by SGP. We need to utilize all RAF funds by June 2010.
Monitoring Systems and Indicators at Field Levels in projects:
Following
the discussions on RAF, Mr. Ishwar poojar from CEE Karnataka
made a presentation on Monitoring & evaluation. During his
discussions he talked about both formal and informal methods of
M&E techniques. Talking about the indicators he said that there
are following type of monitoring indicators -Capability,
Effectiveness , Efficiency and Impact. On this one of the
participants suggested that it is always good to develop these
indicators in consultation with the community which could also
become as a capacity building activity. The issue of carbon
credits became the point of discussion while Ishwar was
discussing and sharing some examples on the efforts taken by the
community in reduction of carbon emissions. Mr. Rathore said
that voluntary market could be explored for the carbon credits.
While exploring the option of the UNDP Anil informed that there
is no funding under CDM from UNDP. Projects could be bundled and
should be registered with the MoEF. It was also decided that in
the coming NSC to put forth the idea of involving consultant for
CDM projects and developing a proposal for the same. Taking the
discussion on M&E ahead one of the participant showed his
concern on the resources required for doing M&E activity. Mr.
Sodhi said that M&E activity for the SGP projects could be
clubbed with other activities of CEE to save resources like time
and money. It was also decided that a copy of all the evaluation
reports of SGP projects should be sent to the SGP secretariat.
It was suggested to develop M&E tools for relationship building.
Mr. Sodhi said that meeting the District collector (DC) of the
area should be an important part of the process.
KBPA campaign:
The campaign is
supported by MoEF is being implemented by CEE in partnership
with Arcelor Mittal, India. Manish briefed the participants on
the campaign and explained the voting system both at school
level and through e-voting. Both the processes of promotion as
well as dissemination of the campaign were explained to the
participants. To make the concept more clear KVS then explained
the concept behind the campaign and future plans on phase II of
the campaign.
Climate
Change Education:
Rixa, a colleague from CEE Germany shared her experiences from
the Climate Change Education Workshop conducted on 8-9th January
2009 at CEE Ahmedabad.
Climate
Change Education Programme:
Talking on the
climate change education programme of CEE, KVS first shared the
concept of footprint with all and how India having a relatively
low foot print could take up the challenge of leapfrogging. He
said that it is very important to let people know how one can
make lifestyle changes to mitigate the climate change because if
we start doing everything right today then also it will take
time. Then he introduced the KBPA/Pick right campaign. He said
that the ambassador selected has to give only 1 day for the
environment to spread messages on climate change and its
mitigation. He said that it is also possible to take this
concept ahead by creating champions at local level in the next
phase.
Anil suggested that since UNDP has a global network so this
concept could be advertised and circulated in all 166 countries
globally. Also it was decided to circulate 10 copies to all
national/international agencies in Delhi and around.
Standard
Operating Procedure:
KVS explained the concept and
importance of SOPs in an organization. He said that it’s a
measure of quality assurance and a way of documenting a process.
He informed that the latest SGP SOP manual for 2009 is ready to
be printed. He said that the draft SOP could be shared with the
participants to give their inputs and that the SOPs should
reflect in action. While sharing the SOP on selection of
proposals he stressed that we need to reduce the number of
rejected proposal at the NSC level and for the NSC to be more
clear on the proposals it would be a good idea to have a 3
minute video documentation of approved proposals, also if the
chair of the RCm is the NSC member then the representation of
proposals could be more clear. It is also good to make use of
new technologies like Skype during such meetings. It was decided
to develop a format for making video documentation of the
selected proposals. As a matter of thumb rule it was informed
that NSC would setup the criteria for selection of proposals
which would be implemented at the RCm level.
Day III: 16th January, 2009
Ist Half:
Participants were taken around for
the sightseeing in Udaipur City.
Session IV
Afternoon session:
Afternoon session started with a
presentation on the SGP database. Manisha took the participants
online to show the SGP India intranet. She showed various
details to be filled into the database. She shared that all
details has to be very accurate and one has to be very careful
while filling these details as it is being monitored very
strictly by the SGP headquarters in New York and is being taken
as one of the important tool to measure the progress of the
country in the Small Grants Programme.
General discussions:
This was followed by general
discussions on ideas and methods to make the programme better.
Please refer to Annexe I, which highlights some of the major
decisions taken. Mr. Umashankar, RCM member for South shared his
views during this discussion. He said that while looking at
scaling up projects we should look up at both temporal and
geographical scaling up. We should encourage good NGOs and
should find pragmatic way of evaluating programmes. Also there
should be cross linkages of projects and recognition of good
partners.
Following points were put forward while discussing selection
criteria for the scaling up projects:
-
Achievement level of the first project
-
Strong
activities to be owned by the Govt/community leading to
ownerships
-
2nd
step should involve market linkage
-
Quantifiable impacts
-
Assessing needs
-
Linkages with Govt. schemes
-
Increase geographical area, increased no. of
beneficiaries
-
Value
addition
Responding to
the Mr. Umashankar’s suggestion on cross linkages of projects
Mr. Sodhi shared two of the SGP projects of Energy Research
Application (ERA) and Covenant Centre for Development (CCD) and
their linkages with SGP partners in different parts of the
country. Dissemination process for both the projects was
discussed and finalized with the RCs and would be circulated.
Later Mr. Sodhi also announced that we need to do 5 workshops
towards capacity building of SGP partners and RCs should send a
2 page note on the same.
This was
followed by presentations by SGP teammates and Mr. Umashankar
was requested to chair this session.
Session V
Innovation, New Ideas, & Pro activeness in project development:
A joint presentation was done by
Simanta and Dr. Rath. After the presentation Mr. Umashankar said
that we should bring together expertise of different NGOs but we
should not get NGOs to do something which they cannot handle.
Simanta and Dr.Rath shared their experiences on bringing
partnerships in projects. They said that sometimes it works and
sometimes it doesn’t. Mr. Sodhi said that we need to draft a
one page SOP on sharing partnerships with NGOs. It was then
decided that RCs should share their experiences on such issues,
with the secretariat and amongst each other.
Sustainability and Links to Markets
Pramod Sharma presented his views
and experiences on establishing market linkages for project
partners. Pramod stressed on the fact that three things are
important for marketing, which is packaging, process and
production. He also said that critical mass is also an essential
factor for marketing. Also NGOs should be capable of branding
their products. After his presentation Umashankar said that
market linkages ensures sustainability. But we need to be
cautious of market and find out if market is supply driven or
demand driven, as demand driven markets are more sustainable.
Records Maintenance in Projects and time periods:
Pritom De shared the accounting and
record keeping system of SGP partners at secretariat level. Some
of main points which came out during discussions are as follows-
-Delayed extensions are not encouraged and so RCs need to follow
up with the NGOs to inform 3 months in advance about the
extension period. Also discourage 2nd extension of the project,
and even the first extension should be supported by proper
justification.
-To keep a check on delayed payments it was decided that the
updated list would be sent by Pritom on 25th of every month to
all the RCs
- No information should be taken on telephone, all
communications should be in written
-It was also suggested to take a copy of the front page of the
pass book so that there is no confusion in account details which
otherwise delays payments.
This was
followed by 3 more presentations by Staish, Darpan and Venkat.
After all the presentations Mr. Umashankar was asked to share
his views as a chair of the session as well as a RCM member. He
said that a range of issues have been discussed here and I feel
that the larger the grant the lesser is the productivity so
grant is inversely proportional to the productivity. Projects
which have created major impacts are the projects receiving
smaller grants. The average quality of proposals is still very
low and a huge amount of time goes in facilitating NGOs. He
appreciated SGP officials who devotes their time patiently in
working on the proposals with the NGO. He also appreciated Mr.
Sodhi as a deep motivator and energetic person behind the
success of SGP in India.
Day IV
A field visit
was organized to Department of Renewable Energy, in College of
Technology &Engineering, Maharana Pratap University of
Agriculture and Technology, Udaipur. Participants got to share
and learn new technologies in renewable energy sector. It was
decided to establish linkages of SGP partners with the
department so that they could make good use of it. After some of
the participants also went to visit the project site of Prayatna
Samiti, a SGP partner in Udaipur.
Annexeure I
Important Decisions
taken:
SOPs to be made on
-
Multiregional Scaling up Project
-
Cross-sharing experiences between stakeholders
-
Organizing of learning events in SGP (workshop, meeting,
exposure visit)
-
Timely
extension of projects
-
On NSC
meeting day RC should be present in the office
-
Partnership within partners for proposal approval and
implementation
-
Communication strategy
-
Knowledge Management
-
Involvement of government
-
Proposal Summary – for ex: Capital items details more
than 10%, all columns to be filled
-
SOP on
audit guidelines
Annexure II
Follow up action points & responsibility:
Action points |
Responsibility |
Revising quarterly report formats to avoid
duplication |
SGP
Sect. |
Examples for SOP manuals for RC’s |
SGP
Sect. to send |
Sending semi annual reports |
RCs |
Sending disbursement table by 25th
of every month |
SGP
Sect. |
Collective reduction of time span to release
installments |
SGP
team |
NSC
agenda’s to RC’s |
SGP
sect. |
Global guidelines for SGP to be sent to RCs |
SGP
sect. |
RCM
minutes use NSC format |
RCs, format already sent by Sect. |
Send copy of RAF strategy to RC’s |
SGP
Sect. |
Bank passbook front page Xerox copy along with
signed MoA |
RCs |
Send final approved proposal, UC format to partner
and RC by Sect along with MOA and attachments |
SGP
sect. |
5
SGP workshops – 2 page note by RC’s to NC by 28th
Feb 09, |
RCs |
Developing proposal for CDM consultancy and discuss
in next NSC meeting |
SGP
Sect. |
Send information of KBPA to UN agencies |
SGP
Sect. |
KBPA details to RCs |
SGP
Sect. |
Reorganize RCM |
RCs
in consultation with NC |
Reports of meeting, workshop |
RCs |
Building enthusiasm within the programme |
SGP
team |
3
min video document format of project documentation |
RCs, format to be finalized by RCs in consultation
with NC |
Every SGP person to have Skype connection |
SGP
Team |
Partner brochures on website |
SGP
Sect. |
75
presentation by SGP partners also inviting state
Government officials and Key donors |
RCs
in consultation with NC |
Annexure II
Workshop
presentations by participants, please find attached as a
separate folder.

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