Govt. reviews community plan

By Adel Fruean 14 November 2018, 12:00AM

The Ministry of Women Community and Social Development has begun consultations to review the Government’s Community Sector Plan 2016 – 2021.

Government officials, development partners, non-government organisation representatives, and parliamentarians converge on the TATTE Building conference room on Wednesday to discuss the roadmap. 

Ministry of Women Community and Social Development (M.W.C.S.D.) Chief Executive Officer, Afamasaga Faauiga Mulitalo, said the review is an important process, as international development strategies such as the Sustainable Development Goals (S.D.G.) will ultimately feed into national plans like the Community Sector Plan 2016 – 2021.

“It was from those strategies that individual countries like Samoa design and develop our own strategy, which we now call the Strategy for the Development of Samoa, which is implemented through the Ministry of Finance—that each sector of the economy would have to develop its own sector plan.

“At the moment, there are 15 sectors within the Samoan economy, which includes the community development sector and we are supposed to come up with sector plans. So this is the second plan for the community development sector.

“The idea of having a sector is to make sure all key partners that are working within the community development sector are reflected and working together, which is one of the purposes of this gathering,” she said.

Feedback from the various stakeholders in Samoa is important, added Afamasaga, as it will enable the lead agencies to design the next sector plan based on the feedback. 

The M.W.C.S.D. is the Government’s lead agency on community development, with the C.E.O. emphasising the need for communication and cooperation between village or district representatives, in order to identify community needs. 

“It is within our vision with the sector plan for communities to lead inclusive developments. The whole idea is for community leaders to be able to lead their own development, with that being said, it is by allowing them to identify what they need as a community and be able to highlight those needs—so that the Government would be in a better position to know what our people need,” she added. 

Feedback from the communities or districts will also assist the Government—through the implementing agencies and lead ministries—to design intervention programs, which will address those needs.

By Adel Fruean 14 November 2018, 12:00AM

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