Projects’ sustainability I

Institutional capacity provides funds

In the Republic of Macedonia, according to some evaluations, around 1,000 projects are carried out a year. In the edition of Projects of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation for 2003, 68.5 projects of civic organizations were covered.

Sustainability of these interventions is disputable. In many cases after the completion of financial and technical support by the donor (most often from abroad), the activities and contributions from the project stop. It means that the money, time, material and technical assets are spent in vain as well as the people’s labor. There are many reasons for this:

-         not enough account is taken for developing local capacities;
-         non-coordination of the development interventions (projects);
-         the real problems of the users or other parties involved in the project are not taken into consideration;
-         the project is not located within rational frames of local or state development strategy;
-         the project’s aims are not clearly defined;
-         ineligible technologies are not applied and the local reviving resources are not used;
-         socio-cultural values of the community and people the project is aimed at are not respected.

In order to provide projects’ sustainability, even in the process of planning all possible ways of providing basic conditions for activities’ continuity should be examined.

In order to be able to say that a project will be sustainable, contributions for the target group should continue being delivered for a certain period after the external help/support ends.

What is important when taking into consideration this explanation/definition of sustainability is the organization’s capability to sustain the services for the target group on an appropriate level, that the activities continued to be implemented after the intervention and the organization is capable of mobilizing new resources. It is not important for the project and its sustainability to depend only on local resources (independence against self-enough), but there should be institutional capacity to provide funds from external sources so that it could be implemented.

When projects are planned and implemented, the following factors should be taken into consideration: 

·      Support from the general policy of the state/region
Development projects have been implemented within the context of the national/regional strategy and state policy. State institutions and governmental bodies can be critically disposed in relation to development projects, so, in order to provide sustainability, it is basic to cooperate with them and to plan projects that will fit in state strategies.

·        Use of appropriate technology
The equipment and technology that is used in the project (development intervention should be in accordance with the local financial and institutional capacities. It is in vain to use too much sophisticated technology in a poor area, where there are not enough educated people.

·        Attention to the environmental protection
Unplanned development accelerates exhaustion and destruction of natural resources, thus disabling their natural renewal. All this is again to the detriment of project’s sustainability.

·        Respecting socio-economic conditions/involving gender balance
Fitting the project in the socio-cultural milieu of the end users is especially important to continue the activities after the project completion.

·        Developing institutional and managing capacity
Management covers capacities for setting goals, determining strategies, mobilizing local resources, providing support from local and national authorities, developing cooperation with complementary organizations, public administration, target group and end users, providing participation. If the personnel lack necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes, or the organization is not properly set in the environment, their developing should be impelled and provided while the development intervention takes place.

·        Economic and financial conditions

 

CONCEPT PAGE 

Project: is a process of selecting ideas and perspectives for achieving clearly defined goals, through a series of activities and in advance set criteria and estimated risks.

Project cycle: a project cycle comprises mutually connected phases through which the project passes during its duration; from the initiating idea itself, to the end of the project, when (ideally) goals are achieved.

Phases of the project cycle are: identification, formulation, financing, implementation and evaluation.