Comunitatea Mea is a five-year, USAID-funded program that is strengthening local government in Moldova to become more effective, transparent, and accountable to citizens.

The program is facilitating Moldova’s decentralization process, building local government’s capacity to meet citizens’ needs, and strengthening citizen confidence that democratic institutions improve their quality of life. To do so, Comunitatea Mea provides comprehensive assistance to local public authorities in communities throughout Moldova, who engage civic groups and businesses to improve public services.

• The program has assisted 200,000 citizens in 20 communities to meaningfully engage in local governance.
• More than 180 officials have received training in municipal budget planning and strategic communications.
• The program supported 17 partner communities in organizing public hearings on drafting budgets for 2019. Out of those communities, nine had never organized public hearings before. 
• Over 400 citizens in 20 communities have learned about local budgetary processes.
• More than 500 people participated in municipal strategic planning workshops, which resulted in the development and updating of local strategic documents.

• 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.

• Technical assistance: Local public authorities receive training in developing municipal budgets and community development strategies through participatory, inclusive planning processes.
• Maximize revenue potential of local public authorities: The program works with local public authorities to increase the percentage of their budget that is locally owned and improve management of all resources, including resources for the reduction of fraud and waste.
• Infrastructure projects: The program supports small community investment infrastructure projects that meet community needs and improve public infrastructure and social services. Groups of 3–5 communities collaborate on larger intermunicipal projects.
• Citizen engagement: Civil society organizations and community initiative groups receive small grants to incubate and expand on successful models for transparency and citizen engagement. Grants provide opportunities to bring successful models to scale and to develop and test new models.
• National dialogue around reforms: Comunitatea Mea will help shape the national dialogue around decentralization and local governance reform through its direct work with communities.
• Support for local-evidence expertise: The program will issue a call for policy research proposals to empower local thought leadership and use of data in policy analysis and development. Staff will also facilitate and support biannual local governance policy exercises for young professionals.