Eupropean Union Poverty Reduction Programme (EU PRP)

The Poverty Reduction Programme (PRP) is a project of the European Union, which was financed by a 6 million Euro grant to the Government of Jamaica and implemented by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF).

The project was designed to improve living conditions in underserved communities by providing access to quality basic infrastructure and services such as, sanitation, water and health. The Programme ensured that participating communities were involved in all stages of the project. The Community Based Organisation (CBO), which initiated the project, had full responsibility for its implementation. The PRP projects utilised the Community Driven Development (CDD) methodology that seeks to allow communities greater control over their own development. The mechanism that was used for this was Community Based Contracting (CBC) where the community groups were trained to undertake the procurement of goods and services and implement the project while JSIF played the role of facilitator.

The PRP was used as a pilot for the CBC approach. Due to the success of PRP and the new global thinking concerning assistance to underserved communities, the CBC approach is also being used to implement the National Community Development Project (NCDP) and the Inner city Basic Services Project (ICBSP).