A study on the Application of the NCDD’s Poverty Alleviation Program: The Case of the People’s Participation in Rural Development in Cambodia

Abstract

This paper analyzes the level and means of the people’s participation in the sustainable development program of the NCDD (National Committee for Democratic Development) in order to alleviate the poverty via the survey of community development in Cambodia where the decentralization and deconcetration had been introduced since 1996 via Seil program. The people’s participation in rural development was a lesson learnt, which created and funded by UNDP/CARERE and Cambodian Government, for local authority in term local governance delegation in investing in public goods. In the program, grassroots and local authorities play active role in planning, implementing, and monitoring the projects, especially rural physical infrastructures. The development challenges basically are education and income of the grassroots, which undermine a social capital accumulation. The education plays the influent role in planning phase while the income does in implementing phase, where the grassroots are altruism. The low educated and earned people lost their social value in expressing their opinion and idea in planning and implementing phase. The program could be developed slowly the influent factors when the many supports are needed.

Keywords: sustainable development, people’s participation, decentralization, and deconcentration.