Project Overview
IR Mali has been working in the cercle of Kati since 1999 on a Water and Sanitation project and seasonal projects (Ramadan and Qurbani).

However, after consultation with the community, a project was designed to provide a sustainable solution for the problems of poverty within the selected communities.

IR's vision for this project is to help rural communities in Djitoumou achieve a sustainable reduction of poverty by strengthening their natural resource base, human resources and by expanding the financial resources available to them.

Problem / Project Background
The cercle of Kati covers a surface area of 16,300 sq km and is located in the southern part of Koulikoro region. It has a population of 405 577inhabitants (51% females and 49% males) with an annual growth rate of 2.48%. The population density is 24.88 people per sq. km.

The cercle contains 497 villages with 47 villages within the project area. The cercle is bordered by:

• The cercles of Kolokani and Koulikororo in the North and North-East
• The cercle of Kangaba in the West
• The cercle of Doïla in the East
• The cercles of Bougouni in the South
  

While IR relief work was focused mainly on providing clean drinking water supply and implementing sanitation projects, we realised that the main problems of Djitoumou stemmed from mass poverty.

Rural people within the four communes lacked local self governance skills, access to basic health care, medicine, and education, and relied on inefficient ways of generating income.

Working closely with the people of Djitoumou, and with the political, administrative, and traditional authorities within the communities made it easier for IR to develop a confident relationship with the local people.

The following institutional development problems were identified:

• Commune Council (CC) members were unaware of the overall communal mission and goals their duties related to the CC, their roles and responsibilities
• Illiteracy of Commune Council (CC) members
• Weak development planning and management
• Poor public relations, representation, lobbying, and advocacy
• Scant financial resources
• Poor human resources management
• Lack of organisational administration or financial planning and accounting).
  

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Furthermore the people of Djitoumou rarely get involved in the actual democratic debates. On occasions that they do, they are represented by a handful of educated people that live in Bamako and not amongst the communities themselves.

Moreover, gender gap is one of the worst problems in the Djitoumou countryside: there are no women in commune councils, and women have a very low literacy rate and no access to production factors, or healthcare

Project Objectives
The project's wider objectives are:

1. Increasing the effectiveness of the civil society through understanding the political, economic and social requirements of decentralization, and improving the levels of participation in democratic processes.
2. Improving access to basic community services (for example, health, education, literacy, food security, micro-credit and saving facilities)
3. Increasing the presence of active, dynamic CBOs, MGOs directly involved in managing the community public affairs.
   

Project Activities
1. Strategic planning and development
2. Strengthening social representation basis and training in approaches to gender
3. Technical auditing
4. Administration, accounting and financial planning training
5. Communication and Public education training on communal duties, obligations and requirements
6. Literacy and post literacy programmes

Beneficiaries
The direct beneficiaries are calculated at a minimum of 22,279 people, 11,362 females and 10,917 males, representing the population of 40 out of 95 villages in the whole project area with a total population of 62,927.

Four commune councils as well as 16 community based organisations and their members will benefit from the project activities.