United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

The 1994 genocide had shattered Rwanda to its core. The new government inherited a country with: citizens dislocated, traumatized and having lost trust in each other. Infrastructure, basic services and property destroyed. Whole families and communities divided. Livestock killed and crops laid to waste. Hospitals and schools ransacked or destroyed. Communal health centers ruined. Stock of health supplies and basic drugs had been looted. Water supply lines were non-operational. Qualified staff had been killed or fled the country including most teachers. An estimated 250,000 women widowed, at least 100,000 children orphaned, lost, abducted or abandoned and an estimated 300,000 children killed. Over 500,000 women were victims of rape and violence. Over 3 million people had fled Rwanda and over 1 million people were killed in the genocide. Poverty levels at their highest. A public service destroyed and faced with the challenge of rebuilding a nation comprising of victims, survivors, returnees and perpetrators of genocide. Citizens apathetic and fearful of the State given their experience of the abusive powers the State had exercised in perpetuating genocide.

This was the background context to the Ubudehe initiative and indeed the whole country. Given such a context the Ubudehe initiative sought to address key challenges:

1. How could citizen apathy towards government and towards their own problems be reduced? How could citizens take charge in truly participating in defining their own problems and working hand in hand with others to solve these problems? How could therefore citizenship be increased and local governance be democratized even further? How do you introduce real participation that strengthens each citizens own power to act and therefore build active Rwandan citizens?
2. How could citizen trust amongst each other be increased to start the difficult process of healing and working together and building greater social capital and inclusion amongst different social groups? How could the preferences and needs of specific excluded groups be highlighted and acted upon by an active citizenry?
3. How could national policy making be influenced and informed by better, rigorous information and statistics generated by citizens themselves thereby providing a more robust basis of how accurate information could be generated for better resource allocation and for holding government and donors accountable to meeting the millennium development goals in Rwanda.

It is these 3 core challenges that the Ubudehe initiative has sought to address.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The Ubudehe initiative seeks to promote self governance and greater citizen engagement in matters of governance. It puts into operation the principle of citizens participation through local collective action. The Ubudehe initiative has achieved several milestones. Indeed Ubudehe has transformed the nature of Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPAs), moving away from traditional approaches to ones where citizens are truly in control. Rwanda is the only country to have achieved 100% nationwide coverage where all villages nation wide actively participated in developing their own social maps and data of the state and extent of poverty and exclusion that various social groups face. The use of social maps has begun to influence new thinking about how national statistical systems can shift away from survey based methodologies to ones that are controlled by citizens and thereby capture citizen voice and preferences regularly. By mid 2008, citizens in all villages had actively participated twice in generating social maps and defining and stating their preferences and priority problems. The information generated from social maps is now being used to act as performance measures to hold national government, ministries and mayors accountable against commitments made. The second major achievement was the fact that citizens had the opportunity to come together in collective action to do something about priority problems they had stated. In 2006-2007, across 9000 villages, citizens came together to solve the problems they had highlighted. In 2007-2008, 15000 villages will benefit from the same support. In total, 25 million euros will be distributed directly to all the villages from the central bank demonstrating how resource transfers from central government can take place fluidly and without much administrative costs directly to citizen groups. The Ubudehe initiative now boasts several thousand examples of active citizen action demonstrating the power of a proactive citizenry if governments can play a more active enabling role for their citizens. Several independent audits and studies have consistently demonstrated that Ubudehe has achieved high value for money by ensuring resources go directly to citizens and contributed to increased citizenship and democratization in Rwanda. But most importantly, across all villages in Rwanda ubudehe is known, and citizens have actively engaged in one way or an other in problem defining and solving processes. In 2006, a survey of more than 1100 heads of household have been conducted identifying a very high level of satisfaction. Excellent - Good (%) Poor – Very Poor (%) Every poor benefits from Ubudehe 73.96 26.04 Empowering the poor 79.49 25.51 Empowering the women 80.88 19.12 Participation in the planning 86.11 13.88 Participation in the decision making 87.21 12.79 Enforcing unified action 82.97 17.03 Unity and reconciliation 80.45 19.54 Giving more hope for the future 80.66 19.34 Fostering understanding between 84.33 15.68 government and the people Ubudehe funds reach the people 75.8 24.21 By end of the 2006, the physical achievements of the project were: Village projects supported: 8.462 Poor families supported: 16.800 Facilitators trained: 17.400 The 2007-2008 campaign is even more ambitious, since 14980 village projects will be implemented.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The Ubudehe initiative emerged thanks to the vision and active engagement of several key actors. During inception core drivers were reformists from the Rwandan Government, in particular Mr. Protais Musoni, the then Secretary General at the Ministry of Local Government (and currently the Minister of Local Government in the Government of Rwanda and the core driving force behind Ubudehe), Mr. Vincent Karega, then director at the Strategic Planning Unit, Ministry of Finance, the social development advisor to DFID Rwanda, the head of EU delegation to Rwanda. Also conceiving the original vision were Sam Joseph, coach and consultant from India. At the heart of implementation has been the Ubudehe Secretariat team of Fidele Kayira and Francis Karake, and over 18,000 volunteer village level Ubudehe facilitators elected by citizens at the local level. And driving ubudehe processes across Rwanda have been millions of citizens actively participating in collective action local problem solving processes across thousands of villages. Solutions for various local problems emerge by citizens themselves there by contributing to a culture of active citizenship. Ubudehe is truly a powerful model of citizen-government engagement. By 2007 more ministries were being introduced into the principles behind Ubudehe. The European Union has to be credited for providing outstanding financial support to enable citizens to have access to resources to plan, budget and solve problems with. The leader and driving visionary behind Ubudehe remains the Ministry of Local Government under the leadership of the Minister, Mr. Protais Musoni. However, ownership of the Ubudehe process has been adopted at level of the society and of the administration. Rwanda has an exceptional process named "Imihigo", through which one each entity of the administration agrees on a yearly "Performance Contract" identifying its target objectives. Since 2007, succeeding in the implementation of the village projects has been incorporated in the community objectives.

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The Ubudehe approach seeks to promote self governance, participatory planning, problem solving, social capital building and entrepreneurship development. It is designed to increase the level of institutional problem-solving capacity at the local level by citizens and local government. It puts into operation the principle of citizen’s participation through local collective action. With the initiative all the households in the village are encouraged to take part in all discussions about their poverty and solutions. This poverty analysis informs all poverty reduction efforts and forms as a robust and rigorous baseline to assess future performance and social change. Village residents are also engaged in discussion to prioritize local problems this provides an overview of the type of problems and their frequency for both policy and action by additional stakeholders. Citizens are also helped to take action on a problem of their choosing through institution of their own design and with assistance of about 1000 euros per village to add to their own contributions this created experience of self-governance and enabled communities to take part in decentralized government. In summary the strategies used included: a. Working with citizen selected facilitators to be based in the communities to facilitate participatory processes. Over 17,500 cascade facilitators were trained. (Trained by Master Trainers attached to the Ministry of Local Government) b. Transforming the nature of Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPA) to move away from the conventional consultative approaches adopted by most countries preparing PRSP papers, to an approach that truly encouraged participation and ensured 100% nationwide involvement of all citizens in defining poverty profiles using social maps and other visual tools as a foundation. (Facilitated by community facilitators) c. The rich analysis that emerged from this process has begun to influence the production of national statistics and is beginning to demonstrate that is it possible to get more accurate poverty related data compared to survey based statistical systems. (Used by Ministry of Local Government and Ministry of Finance) d. Supporting citizens in each village with a maximum of EUR 1000 to act on problems identified during the PPA process. For the first time, PPA’s moved from being extractive information gathering processes to something citizens felt they could act on themselves. Over 10,000 village actions emerged. (Resources provide by EU, process facilitated by community facilitators)( 15,000 actions planned for 2007-2008) e. Developing financial systems from central Government to citizen accounts at local level without any intermediaries in between and with low transaction costs. f. Repeating cycles of collective action at local village level before scaling up to sectoral and district levels to provide public goods on a larger scale driven, designed and owned by citizens. g. Using information generated in social maps to hold various national government departments to account and use social maps as a basis for developing a alternative citizen driven national statistical system (Ministry of Local Government)

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
1999 – 2001 Emergence of initial ideas, theories, and vision to create a process that increases citizen’s ability to self-govern and become proactive citizens in shaping the design of their governance. The idea of Ubudehe emerges. At the same time, PRSP process requirement for a PPA also exists. This serves as an opportunity to demonstrate the power of citizen participation in its truest form. Agreement reached to run a pilot process on condition that citizens will be in charge and in control of generating their own poverty information, AND will also be given the opportunity to act collectively in solving common problems. 2001 Pilot process run in Butare, Nyanza Province, Rwanda to demonstrate the possibilities and abilities of citizens to exercise their own power to act in analyzing their own poverty and also having the ability to act together to solve specific problems in the production and provisioning of public goods. 12 Master Trainers trained and cell residents in Butare selected one resident to be the cell (village) facilitator. Between February and June 2001, 1823 facilitators were trained to embark on the pilot 2002 Citizens in 681 Villages / Cellules in Butare had completed detailed social maps (in large cloths making visual validation possible – from individual household names, social categories, infrastructure and service provision and other characteristics) analyzing their poverty characteristics. The European Union had committed 1 million euros for this pilot which went directly to the 681 pilot villages between 2002 and early 2003. For the first time resources were disbursed directly from a donor to a central bank of a government to citizens in the villages with no intermediary in between. 2002 – 2003 Citizens across all the 681 pilot villages acted collectively with technical support from relevant stakeholders to solve problems they had prioritized during social mapping, make this the first time PPA’s led to active action by citizens. Citizens had full freedom and control in budgeting and allocating resources building greater ownership and recognition by citizens that state resources were theirs to use as active citizens. Village bank accounts were opened by citizens and resources transferred directly from the central bank. 2003 – 2004 Results from the Butare pilot demonstrate successfully the power of citizen participation and collective action. The pilot is enough to convince Government to make Ubudehe a national policy and the EU to allocate 10 million euros for a nationwide rollout with the aim to reach over 9175 cellules (villages) covering the whole of Rwanda. 2005-2006 18,350 cellule level facilitators trained and nationwide rollout begins in 2006. Information from Butare pilot begins to be used to demonstrate how nationwide evidence based policy making can take place using analysis and data generated by citizens. 2007-2008 Government of Rwanda budgets 500 million Rfrancs from national budget for Ubudehe. EU allocates additional 15 million euros. Ministry of Local Government now using data generated by citizens to hold other ministries to account. Citizen participation increasing. More people becoming interested. Good achievement of projects incorporated in "performance contracts".

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
As with any emergent process Ubudehe has encountered, and continues to encounter new challenges Challenges can be summarized in three categories: Mindsets and Belief Systems; Administrative Bureaucracies and Bottlenecks; and lastly the time it has taken to generate wider stakeholder support towards the core participation principles that drive Ubudehe. Mindsets and Belief systems of citizens and policy makers alike have at times been obstacles. The ability to believe that citizens have power, and that citizens can exercise their own power to act and be proactive citizens instead of helpless apathetic recipients of State patronage and power is a powerful belief system that is not easily accepted. For citizens to find, experience and discover that they could engage in collective action with others to solve common public problems was powerful and the success has depended on the abilities of citizens to engage and trust one and other. At times this trust building process has taken long for citizens to realize their innate potential. Similarly for government officials to discover that actually citizens have more information and understanding than them has equally been a powerful obstacle to break. By engaging over time with citizens more and more government administrators are realizing how they can work in co-partnership with citizens instead of treating citizens as helpless subjects. Greater popular education and increased experiences by citizens in Ubudehe processes has helped contribute to changing citizen world views and world views of government officials and those in power. Administrative Bureaucracies and Bottlenecks have also been obstacles. For example trying to design a system where resources could be transferred directly from the central bank to cellules took time and at times the procedures of various donors have led to greater administrative workloads. Deadlines and conditions have sometimes prevented different processes from building on the experiences of ubudehe. These administrative bottlenecks are gradually being reduced through experience. Most development actors whether governments, NGOs or donors prefer to do things for citizens instead of trusting and encouraging the ability of citizens to exercise their own power to act over their own problems and become proactive citizens in determining the shape and nature of governance and government. At the heart of Ubudehe is the core principle of citizens participation and their own power to act. And whilst this is promoted on the one hand, many civil society organizations and government departments continue to impose their own practices and views on citizens thereby contradicting the very essence of Ubudehe. However with growing interest in Ubudehe it is hoped that a more collaborative approach grounded in Ubudehe principles will be taken over time as opposed to many of the parallel initiatives that often lead to wastage of resources and low sustainability.

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The ministry of local government has provided overall leadership to Ubudehe and staff and support to two members at the Ubudehe Secretariat. The Government of Rwanda has allocated 500 million Rwandan francs annually from the National Budget to Ubudehe. The European Union has contributed a total of 25 million euros to date with successful audits. The African Development Bank (ADB) has contributed USD 2 million to support three districts. The Belgian Technical Cooperation is supporting Ubudehe with an additional 2 million euros. ActionAid International Rwanda has seconded a staff to the Ubudehe secretariat and earlier provided two vehicles. Several others have volunteered their services to Ubudehe.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Because Ubudehe is founded on the core principles that citizens must be enabled to exercise the power to Act, by it’s very nature the Ubudehe initiative is sustainable and transferable. Nationally, Ubudehe has grown from a small pilot in Butare to achieve national coverage. By 2007, other ministerial departments were being introduced to the power of social maps in determining performance measures by which government departments and officials can be held to account. The fact that ubudehe scaled up from 600 cellules to more than 9154 cellules is testament to its transferability as is the fact that Ubudehe is recognized nationally and now being budgeted for nationally by the government of Rwanda. Because the essence of Ubudehe is to enable citizens to experience their own power to act and solve their own problems in collective unity, the Ubudehe experience has demonstrated the power of social capital to citizens helping citizens move away from being dependants and helpless subjects into proactive actors of their own development. By default as this confidence in citizens increases, sustainability increases, as citizens realize that they can tackle communal problems collectively without always having to rely on the State or outsiders to solve problems. The Ubudehe process itself facilitated by local community volunteers enables citizens to design local problem solving institutions that can self-govern and self-manage. Only when a sustainability test for self-governance and self-management of capital, operational, maintenance, information and coordination costs is completed can citizens engage in a problem solving process. This sustainability test ensures that citizens craft local problem solving institutions that they truly own. This includes environmental concerns that can plague the management of common pool resources. The initiative enables village residents to increase their own problem-solving capabilities. To sustain that, at village level there are two trained people who helps local people to come together in a purposeful action to engage with a single problem of their choosing using first their own contribution not always waiting for the support. But if necessary Government. NGOs, Donors can be consulted for technical advices and financial support. This initiative is also drawn from the Rwandan traditional practice of mutual help and assistance this helps people to own it. As the initiative is still evolving there are aspects of Ubudehe that may not be replicated currently, but could be replicated in the near future. In particular, the ability to transform a national statistical system to capture nationwide citizen voice is of huge significance as this provides the opportunities for countries to generate much more accurate poverty related data resulting in more evidence based policy making, resource allocation and the development of performance measures designed and owned by citizens themselves.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
There are several elements that have contributed to the evolving success of the Ubudehe initiative. No doubt one of the most important success factors is the hope and passion of millions of Rwandan’s who after witnessing one of the worst disasters in human history have a desire to never repeat history again and who have a strong desire to rebuild and recreate a new Rwanda. It is this hope that has driven many of the visionaries behind the Ubudehe process to be bold and innovate with an approach that seeks to strengthen proactive citizenship and liberate citizens from control and dependency on national governments. Secondly a firm belief in the principle of real participation and opportunities to demonstrate what this participation looks like in practice have visually demonstrated and encouraged greater support from others. Starting small, and scaling up was a core strategy. Thirdly, recognizing that any long term change process takes time, and persisting with long term processes has ensured that Ubudehe makes small but gradual inroads into national acceptance. Fourthly keeping overheads low and ensuring over 80% of resources are controlled by citizens themselves has been central in ensuring Ubudehe’s success. The ubudehe secretariat comprises of a small team of no more than 5 people nationally, and there are no intermediaries in ensuring resources flows between the central government and cellules. Fifthly, more tangibly the success of the initiative are the social mapping of all households with their social categories in a visual too (social map). This initiative helped people to come together to develop a common understanding of a problem and experience problem solving through direct engagement. With the initiative people learn that they are capable of governing themselves. People have development a sense of implementing and managing their affairs. In the process citizens debate, negotiate and reach an agreement which contains details about a commonly agreed purpose, budget and rules of association that will bind citizens. All of this increases local pools of knowledge. By default this initiative has increased the accountability and transparency in the management of their collective action leading to wider calls for accountability and transparency. And this approach now provides for the next phase of Ubudehe – a basis for planning longer term and larger scale support to citizens at District level. Sixth, the ability of donors such as the European Union to take initial risks and experiment with the process have given much boost and demonstrate the need for donors to move beyond straight jacket approaches and try out initiatives that may be more relevant to specific contexts.


Institution Name:		Common Development Fund
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Fidèle KAYIRA
Title:		Program Coordinator
Telephone/ Fax:		+250 08306757
Institution's / Project's Website:		+250 588191
E-mail:		kayirafidele@yahoo.fr
Address:		PB 7305
Postal Code:
City:		KIGALI
State/Province:
Country:		Rwanda

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information