Economic Self-Reliance Programme / Caraballo & Southern Cordillera Development (ERP-Cascade)

Detailed description of project Back

The CASCADE Programme succeeds the Earthquake Rehabilitation Programme which sought to restore infrastructure support in areas devastated by the 1990 earthquake. Covering 19 municipalities in the 3 provinces of Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija and Benguet, CASCADE affects the lives of some 25.000 households.

The project objective is to increase, on a sustainable basis, the level of income and standard of living for the populations of the target area, 85 % of whom are indigenous people, through the promotion of an agro-based local economy and the development of sustainable locally-based support systems.

The project promotes self-reliance on three levels: technical self-reliance, the introduction of appropriate upland technologies; financial reliance, the development of a sustainable financial system that best answers the needs of the upland population and managerial self-reliance, the building of capacities of the local actors, from people’s organizations to local government units (LGUs), to independently manage their own affairs.

The guiding principles of the project are:

• Participation: local communities are involved across all stages of planning, implementation and monitoring;
• Responsiveness to community needs: flexibility in project planning and management makes for competent responses to the development priorities as expressed by local communities;
• Community ownership: maximizing community ownership of development actions, specifically through community-based decision making, co-financing and the direct implementation by communities themselves;
• Sustainability: actions geared towards long term sustainability with the appropriate financial and physical supports from both institutional and organizational levels.

Type of services provided

Technical Assistance supporting, next to overall programme management, the following five main lines of actions or components:

• Agricultural Production Systems Development (farming systems development, development of support services, development of marketing system).
• Micro-Enterprise Development (product development programme, micro-enterprise training programme, product design, labelling and nutrient content analysis programme).
• Social Development (building and rehabilitation of potable water systems, strengthening barangay health and nutrition services, development of community-based support services, waste management and sanitation programme).
• Institutional Development (strengthening of Local Government Unit planning capacity, training support to LGUs, strengthening of the Local Development Councils, Natural Resources Management.