International Symposium on Community Governance Practices (ISCGP)

International Symposium on Community Governance Practices (ISCGP)

July, 04 – 05, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka

 INTRODUCTION

The International Symposium on Community Governance Practices (ISCGP) is a collaborative effort of CARE international – Sri Lanka (CARESL), the Department of Economics of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura (DoEUSJP) and Practical Action Sri Lanka to be held on July, 04 – 05, 2013 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The symposium aims at creating a forum for practitioners and academics to present and discuss various community governance approaches and contribute to a policy dialogue which will culminate with formulation of policy inputs that can be adopted in framing of a community governance system for the country. These inputs will be fed into a regional program aims at developing a community governance framework for South Asia.

CARE Sri Lanka has been implementing projects that strengthen community governance process in last few decades with the intention of addressing the issues related to poverty and social injustice in the country. Local efforts for Empowerment and Development Project (LEaD) is one such project funded by the OAK Foundation and implemented in the Southern dry zone of Sri Lanka. Life span of this particular project is six years and to be ended by August 2013. Project introduced and promoted a participatory community governance model in 170 selected communities in the Moneragala and Hambantota districts to enhance the community participation in decision making processes. As the project approaches are proven to be instrumental in enhancing community governance, it was decided to share its experiences, knowledge and the results with a wider audience through a national event.

Similarly, Practical Action posses an ample practical exposures in the area of community  governance in urban context in the South Asian region that they have obtained through their projects, namely  Community Governance in Infrastructure Services in South Asia and Delivering Decentralization, that are co-financed by the European Union. The ultimate target of both these initiatives is to contribute to a regional framework for community governance which will enhance the policy formulation discourse on community governance in the countries of the South Asia region.

The collaboration between CARE, Practical Action and the University in the Symposium expected to deliver a comprehensive knowledge base including both practical and theoretical aspects in community governance which will feed into both national and regional policy dialogues.

OBJECTIVES OF THE ISCGP

1. To create a forum to bring and share knowledge and experiences of practitioners, professionals and academics on currently important themes of community governance models/practices.
2. To share the community governance experience, best practices, lessons learnt and the achievements of CARESL’s LEaD project, Practical Action and other stakeholders with the state, non-state actors, academics, practitioners and professionals in the discipline of community governance.
3. To compile and share local and international best community governance practices generated as a result of the symposium with practitioners, professionals, academia, and governmental and non-governmental organizations involved in community governance.
4. To develop sound policy recommendations and propose inputs for a Community Governance Policy for Sri Lanka that will be fed in to the South Asian Regional level policy framework

PRESENTATIONS

Presentations of the symposium consist of three main parts, namely:

1. Community governance model introduced by CARE under the LEaD project :
   Presentation of community governance model developed and implemented by CARE under the LEaD Project
2. Evaluation of the LEaD community governance model by independent researchers
   Competitive project Grants proposals for a maximum of LKR 300,000 are invited from eligible researchers to evaluate the above model.
3. Research papers on community governance.
   Research papers are invited on different practices and perspectives to cover selected thematic areas