Gemidiriya Community Development and Livelihood Improvement Project was designed to assist the implementation of the Government Poverty Alleviation Strategy. The World Bank has agreed to provide facilities amounting to US$ 181 million for a period of 12 years for the implementation of the project on successful operation of the model. A grant of US$ 51 million has already been made available by the World Bank to implement the first phase of four years. The Gemidiriya Project model has been pilot tested successfully by the Village Self-Help Learning Initiative (VSHLI) in Polonnaruwa District for the past five years.

VSHLI was launched by the International Development Agency of the World Bank in 1999 as a pilot project with the Japan Social Development Fund and Mahaweli Restructuring and Rehabilitation Program. Its development objective was to formulate a more appropriate model for planning, implementing and maintaining rural development towards sustainability through community participation and empowerment and to implement it as a learning project of poverty reduction. This pilot started implementation at the end of 1999 in 3 villages and by the end of 2004 it had expanded to cover 30 villages with 8634 poor families.

Gemidiriya Community Driven Development Program paves the way for rural communities to get together, organize formally, plan village development by themselves with 50% women participation mobilizing self help and community contribution. The model focuses on livelihood improvement ensuring reinvestment of savings within the village economy with the understanding that poverty alleviation is not possible unless the root causes of poverty are removed.


The development objective of the 12 year Gemidiriya Program is to enable the rural communities to improve their livelihoods and quality of life.

The objective of the first phase of the first five years is to enable the communities of Uva and Southern Provinces and Ratnapura District of Sabaragamuwa province to build accountable and self-governing local institutions and to manage sustainable investments by :

(i)	devolving decision making power and resources to community organizations
(ii)	strengthening selected local governments which demonstrate responsiveness and accountability to rural communities
(iii)	working with federations of village organizations, the private sector and non-governmental organizations(NGOs) on economic empowerment to increase the size and diversity of livelihood options.

The Phase II of the project focuses to promote sustainable livelihoods and institutional development at intra- and inter-village level by scaling up institutional mechanisms, financing models, and partnerships between villages and private, public and financial sectors. Further, it is expected to achieve its objectives through, linkage of village institutions to local governments for sustainable livelihoods; market linkages through improved technology; building capacity of local institutions to implement national programs for sustainability of livelihoods based on the successful implementation of Community Driven Development (CDD) models.

The Project initiated programs to build village economic organizations legally accepted and managed by the communities through self selection process on poverty and the expressed willingness of the people of more than 80% representation of families of the village to follow Gemidiriya principles. The project assists the community to identify their needs on priority basis, and design a village development plan for implementation, The required funds are directly provided to the Village Organizations on conditions and agreements within a limit computed on a per capita basis of the population of the village through three main funds namely, Capacity Building through institutional development, Community Infrastructure Development & livelihood Development

Phase II of the project is expected to expand horizontally (spatially) to two new districts, namely Kegalle  and Nuwaraeliya and vertically consolidate gains of Phase I through linking federations with private and public sector agencies and local governments. Though the phase I was successful in scaling up of community level institutional model, its impact was limited as it could not address constraints beyond the intra village level. As a result, Phase II is anticipated to promote inter connectivity village development activities in 10 Pradeshiya Sabahs, by spending  Rs. 210 Million  per PS to ensure the community level investments and institutions which are sustainable in the long run and promote sustainable livelihood development. Under the inter connectivity development, it is expected to provide infrastructure to connect rural villages mainly for their livelihood improvement.  In this respect, inter village connectivity development programmes have already implemented in four PSs namely, Angunakolapellessa, Kuruwita, Siyambalaanduwa and Passara in the Districts of Hambanatota, Ratnapura, Moneragala and Badulla respectively

Convergence and Policy Support provides technical assistance to Gamaneguma/ Samurdhi programmes to adopt the CDD approach and improve pro-poor orientation and fund VDPs of demonstration villages. Accordingly, it is required to build capacities of local and public officials to deliver government programs using the CDD model in 50 villages of Kalutara and Kurunegala Districts, out of which 40 villages have already adopted the CDD Model.  In addition, the Samurdhi Authority will also undertake 100 Villages by adopting the CDD Model and the GDF will provide the technical support.

The main objective of the first year (2010) of the second phase of the project is to consolidate the gains of Phase I and complete the remaining activities.

The specific objectives of the Phase II for the year 2010 are as follows:

(i)	Setting up systems for operation, management and monitoring of the project;
(ii)	Developing  and strengthening second generation institutions;
(iii)	Testing of interconnectivity village development and strengthening of local government initiatives (ie.PSs);
(iv)	Establishing Producer Federations and promotion of livelihood development options;
(v)	Reaching out to 645 new  villages including  estate communities; and
(vi)	Building capacity of public sector agencies in adopting and operationalizing the CDD approaches.