The EU/UNDP supported projects “Enhancement of Living Standards” (ELS) Karakalpakstan and in Namangan region are holding a series of community events called “Our community-our MDGs” with 100 communities (Mahallas) in these two economically challenged regions of Uzbekistan.

These communities were selected by the ELS project from a larger pool. The selection was based on the results of a MDG competition in which every community had to indicate which Millennium Development Goals (MDG) most applied to their community and the concrete measures that could be undertaken by the community together with local authorities to achieve the goals.

A problem analysis conducted at district level has identified that the major problems for communities in these two regions of Uzbekistan are: access to and quality of water and sanitation, environmental degradation, tuberculosis, maternal and women’s health. It has also revealed that communities are willing to go a long way to solve their problems and can often rely on their own means to do so. What it matters most, say the community leaders and the project team is “to move away from the old habit of waiting for someone to come and bring about their own development brand as it used to happen in the Soviet past”.

In July and August, the ELS project teams and the communities will work side by side during a number of MDG localization workshops. These workshops will use the MDGs as a tool of for dialogue and discussion on the communities’ own development, where communities stand presently and they want to be in the long and medium run (1 to 5 years).

During the workshops, the communities will discuss, review local best practices and project success stories. Facilitators will make a special effort to ensure the relevance of the MDGs to the community’s daily lives and their own development.

As a result of the workshop, the communities will the able to develop their own “MDG community passports” and identify a number of specific social rehabilitation project proposals to be presented for co-funding by the project and joint implementation. Community projects, such as renovation of infrastructure sites, schools, medical points, roads and bridges, will begin before the fall.

The ELS projects have invited all UN agencies interested to participate in these workshops. The project will add specific modules developed by the agencies which are relevant to the MDGs. Thus, agencies can take the opportunity to distribute information, bring messages across communities, and identify areas for interventions and support community efforts.