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Field Articlestops at the village.Donors, UN and NGOs alike all now share thelanguage of inclusiveness and communityinvolvement. If this is a real commitment it implies aletting go of power to the people that are served, withno holding back. The method above relies on the factthat people had information on which to decide andwere very clear that decisions on their resources weremade within their community. The dialogue anddevolution was as real as it could be. Why should webe surprised that communities manage to organisethemselves more fairly and with less fuss thanoutside agencies when they are given theopportunity?Alternative Distribution Systems:Tanzania – Rwandan refugees returning toRwanda, lined up for rations of biscuits.(R. Chalasani/UNHCR)Community Managed Targeting – TanzaniaPost–script, by Jeremy Shoham, ENNDFID commissioned an evaluation of thecommunity–managed targeting programme inSingida and Dodoma regions of CentralTanzania in May 1999. As a member of theevaluation team, I can confirm the very positiveimpression of the programme portrayed in the abovearticle. All stakeholders that I interviewed, e.g.beneficiaries, village relief committee members andstaff at different levels of government, were satisfiedwith the programme. They believed that the systemdid target the neediest households and that it wasequitable, transparent and accountable. The systemseemed to work even when only small amounts offood were available, for example, in Iramba districtwhere limited food availability meant that only thepoorest 20% of households could be targeted. Thesystem compared very favourably with the oneimplemented the year before which most people weredissatisfied with. The previous system operatedthrough village government structures and was not atall transparent. The result was that certain groupswere favoured above others and that more or lesseveryone was given a ration so that the per capitareceipts of food aid were very small and not thatuseful to those with genuine large food deficits.There also appear to have been some unintendedbenefits of this community-managed programme.First, women became more prominent in public lifeat village level and were seen by the men to havedone an excellent job. Many male members of thecommunity stated that they would vote for some ofthese women in subsequent village governmentelections. Up until now women have always been in aminority on village government committees. Second,regional governments of both Singida and Dodomawere hoping to retain these village relief committeesfor food security work during non–emergencyperiods, i.e. following up with vulnerable householdsto determine how the community could support thesefamilies.While not wishing to minimise the success of thisprogramme, there were of course some difficulties:i) as stated in the article, the limited availability offood aid determined that village relief committees(VRCs) were directed to register only 60% ofhouseholds. In many villages the perception was thatup to 80% of households fitted the selection criteria.The exclusion of some families therefore placedconsiderable strain on VRCs and in a few isolatedcases this led to insecurity at distribution sites;ii) population figures for each village were mainlytaken from district level data. These were oftenwildly inaccurate (usually under–estimates) so thatamounts of food allocated to villages were too small.VRCs then either reduced the per capita ration orunder–registered, e.g. only registered some membersof a household;iii) in a minority of cases, particularly in Dodomaregion, under–registration was carried out in adiscriminatory manner. For example, households ofthe same size would have different numbersregistered by the committee, i.e. those favoured bythe committee would tend to have more registered. InSingida region under–registration was systematic andtherefore fairer, e.g. if there was a shortage of food,infants in households would not be registered;iv) Members of the VRC would spend between 7–14days in their activities. This undoubtedly detractedfrom their ability to carry out their own work. ManyVRC members wanted some form of communitypayment, e.g. child care, cooked meals. Another formof payment suggested was that the committee shouldbe allowed to keep the food sacks which have aconsiderable monetary value.The success of this community managed targetingcontrasts with other recent experiences of communitytargeting, e.g. amongst pastoralists in Turkana andrecently in South Sudan, (see Field Exchange 6).There may be a number of factors specific to theTanzanian context which predisposed to the successof this type of community managed targeting system.These are as follows:• a well–established structure of villagegovernment and tradition of village level publicmeetings and decision making• the participatory approach is consistent withestablished national policy and initiatives alreadytaken in the region and strong high levelgovernment support at central and regional levelsdeflecting some local political resistance• peace and stability in an area of small cohesivevillage units (3–5,000) and an absence of anyserious inter–communal division• no excessive stress – the intervention waspreventive, i.e. to preserve livelihoods, and not aresponse to an acute crisis• availability of a pool of government extensionstaff and some NGO personnel experienced inworking at village level often with participatoryapproachesPage 20 — ENN, Field Exchange, July 99