Enhancement of Living Standards and the Millennium Development Goals

In practice this project helps communities rehabilitate social infrastructures and ensure access by the poor to microcredits. The practical experience acquired in this process has been used to prepare regional and local development plans that respond to people’s needs. For example, the local living standards maps produced by the project translate statistical socioeconomic information collected from local authorities and communities into a picture of the situation in the ground. The maps and their methodology will be used and refined to target interventions for poverty reduction more effectively and in closer consultation with local actors.

Also, the process of living standards mapping which involve local authorities and communities will be used as a means to involve local communities and authorities more closely in the process of preparation of the national strategy for the improvement of living standards. However and closer to people’s lives, the immediate impact of ELS is in the improvement of living standards through an increased access to drinking water, gas, electricity and sanitation.

The projects strategy builds on and complements previous efforts by using tested community development approaches and adapts them to local circumstances. For example, community mobilization of local resources through traditional forms of community contribution to local development, and community based participatory methodologies and rapid appraisals to identify and prioritize local development issues.

How do we determine needs for development? First the ELS team meets with the respected people of community: aksakals, women-activists, or representatives of local authority, and brainstorm with them about the most serious problems of that particular area using the MDGs. Local residents think and decide for themselves what should be done to make the life of the community better. Then the EU and UNDP in their turn estimate the funds that are needed to solve the problem. One of the important ideas about the ELS projects is that the EU and UNDP have chosen to share costs with local communities rather than cover all the expenses from the project budget. Whereas local people are usually limited in funds, they can contribute their labour, equipment and skills. In such a way the ELS project joins hands with people and make them believe in their capacities to influence their own development.

Another component of the ELS project is to facilitate access by local communities to micro-finance, which has proved to be a powerful tool to improve living standards. Existing micro-financial institutions in project region are supported by the ELS to develop their business strategies, improve basic operation systems, develop new products, and expand current operations. In addition, the ELS is helping low-income agricultural farmers to achieve greater economies of scale by starting new business schemes such as collective purchasing, production and marketing arrangements.

To find out more on the ELS programme activities and the MDGs, please see