Goals
- Improve quality of and access to municipal services.
- Meaningfully engage citizens in local governance.
- Advance decentralization policy reforms.
- Increase locally owned revenues, and improve financial management practices.
Comunitatea Mea (My Community)
Comunitatea Mea is a five-year, USAID-funded program that aims to strengthen local government in Moldova to become more effective, transparent, and accountable to citizens.
The program facilitates Moldova’s decentralization process, strives to build local government’s capacity to meet citizens’ needs, and strengthens citizen confidence that democratic institutions improve their quality of life. Increasing the capacity of local authorities will not only improve government services but also strengthen citizen support for effective and transparent government institutions.
Comunitatea Mea is a five-year, USAID-funded program that aims to strengthen local government in Moldova to become more effective, transparent, and accountable to citizens.
The program facilitates Moldova’s decentralization process, strives to build local government’s capacity to meet citizens’ needs, and strengthens citizen confidence that democratic institutions improve their quality of life. Increasing the capacity of local authorities will not only improve government services but also strengthen citizen support for effective and transparent government institutions.
Project Activities
- Technical assistance: IREX will provide technical assistance to local public authorities to develop municipal budgets and community development strategies through participatory, inclusive planning processes.
- Infrastructure projects: Projects will fall into two major categories: community investments and intermunicipal projects involving 3–5 communities. We expect the program will support at least 12 intermunicipal projects and 50 community investments, for a total of 100 local public authorities.
- Citizen engagement: The program will establish a pool of small grants for civil society organizations and community initiative groups to incubate and expand on successful models for transparency and citizen engagement. Grants will provide opportunities to bring successful models to scale and to develop and test new models.
- Support for local-evidence expertise: To empower local thought leadership and use of data in policy analysis and development, the program will (1) issue a call for policy research proposals and (2) facilitate and support biannual local governance policy exercises for young professionals under age 34.
- Maximize revenue potential of local public authorities: The program will work with local public authorities to (1) increase the percentage of their budget that is locally owned and (2) improve management of all resources, including resources for the reduction of fraud and waste.
People
Kathy Evans
Associate Vice President, Communities and Governance
Christopher Kaczmarski
Chief of Party
Swathi Massar
Technical Advisor
Kevin Rubio
Deputy Director, Communities and Governance
Yuliya Solovey
Program CoordinatorPartners
