The Afghanistan Community Resilience and Livelihoods Project (CRLP) is a US$419 million initiative supported by the World Bank and Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF). CRLP was initially approved on 29th April 2022. In January and April 2024, the project was extended to 31 December 2025.
“In the past 18 months, the project has laid the foundation for an effective service delivery platform and operational model at scale for delivering jobs, providing essential services and assets, and, importantly, reaching women. With the additional financing, the project will continue its essential works in all six regions of the country, 29 of the 34 provinces, 94 rural districts, 9,650 rural communities, and eight major cities.” -Melinda Good, World Bank Country Director for Afghanistan, on the occasion of the project amendment, April 2024. Source: World Bank
CRLP contributes to strengthened community and household resilience, increased household income and consumption, improvements to basic services and preservation of community institutions.This is achieved through four key interventions:
-
Emergency Livelihoods Support for Rural Areas
This activity provides livelihood support and services in rural areas through cash-for-work opportunities. Through a participatory decision-making process, communities prioritize and select subprojects based on their collective needs. These subprojects can include rehabilitation of small-scale community assets such as community roads, protection walls, community drainage and water canals, agroforestry, and climate resilient small-scale projects. The community then selects vulnerable but physically capable members of their community to work on these subprojects for daily wages. Cash for work programs is a valuable tool for providing immediate income, promoting community development, and building resilience in vulnerable communities.
-
Emergency Livelihoods Support for Urban Areas
In urban areas, labor intensive works are conducted to provide livelihood opportunities and respond to urgent service delivery needs in urban areas. The project targets(i) have witnessed a high influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs); (ii) have witnessed returnees from neighboring countries (iii) are hubs of economic and private sector activity. Through Urban Community representative groups (CRGs) , Gozar Assemblies (GAs) or community consultative groups (CGs) in the target cities, vulnerable households are selected to work on subprojects for a daily wage. Interventions will be prioritized in: (i) sectors in which access to urban services are lacking; (ii) neighborhoods in which work opportunities are scarce; and (iii) intervention types that maximize the use of unskilled and semi-skilled labor
-
Social Grants for Women and the Most Vulnerable in Rural and Urban Areas
Small social grants are distributed to the most vulnerable households in the community, both urban and rural, who cannot participate in the paid labor. Female-headed households (FHH) without physically capable male wage earners, households headed by persons with disability, elderly or drug addicted persons will form most of the beneficiaries, and it is expected that they will comprise about 10 percent of the community’s households. Social grants are provided as food packages in rural areas; and cash distribution in urban areas.
-
Strengthening of Community Institutions
This intervention builds the capacity of Community representative groups and community representative sub-groups in local communities for long- term sustainability and social resilience. It supports community mobilization and planning, implementation, monitoring, and training on a variety of topics, such as development planning, the establishment of Kitchen Gardens and Grain/Food Banks, and women’s well-being, and health awareness (through the WB/ARTF-supported health project). Importantly, communities will continue to be trained and capacitated on community-based climate and disaster risk management building on lessons learnt emergency livelihoods support and social grants.
|