IRSP, the successor of Pak-German IRDP, is now working with a separate management and governance structure with the objective to consolidate and replicate a unique integrated rural development model for good local governance and poverty alleviation.

One of the factors of its uniqueness is its Regional Council for Development (RCD), comprised almost up to 90% of community members, acting as Board of Directors or governors called councilors. Seven of these councilors are elected and seven nominated from a General Body of 84 members. Two women councilors are elected from amongst the six Women Wings under each regional office who represent interest of the community women in the RCD. Similarly, for technical input, guidance and necessary support, four expert/professional members from outside the RDOs are appointed as councilors after consensus of the Board i.e., RCD. Due to this novel approach, the government and non-government circles in the development field in Pakistan have appreciated all the recent developments.

Many non-government actors are active in the field of rural development in Pakistan these days. Without any intention to disregard or downplay efforts by other organizations, one has to admit the fact after a thorough analysis that some rural development models faced an early failure due to one or another reason. Others are being practiced with huge inputs since long with a hope to empower the poor communities but without any withdrawal strategy and no plans of phasing out or directly addressing the root causes of social, political and economic inequalities. Everyone is rushing to form community organizations at the grassroots level.

The problem, in fact, is that many community development programs are ignoring the very important area of developing meso-level institutions. Most of them are working directly with the grassroots communities at the micro-level, hoping that they would get linked to the local government, line departments and donors at the macro-level. However, without an exit strategy and comprehensive policy they are not making any substantial progress on the road to good local governance.

Some Programs claim to be working with apex (or cluster) organizations without any groundwork at the grassroots level. Nevertheless, such apex level organizations do not come into existence without extensive work at the micro-level. Still there is no concrete strategy of linking micro- and macro-level local institutions with the help of meso-level organizations. In this regard, Pak-German IRDP, after many trials and mishaps in the field, came up with the only model of its kind, in Pakistan at least, where micro and meso-level local institutions are developed as the most effective actors in good local governance and poverty alleviation. The beauty of this model is that the institutions developed by Pak-German IRDP didn't phase out with the winding up of the project. Instead they have turned into an organized Local Organization (IRSP) with local staff for local development. It shows that in the presence of such a local support program all the regional development activities, e.g., whether government, donors, or locally funded -- need not be carried out by expensive external contractors, intermediary bodies and brokers organizations.

Experience shows that 60-80% of the funds allocated by the donors or GOP are wasted on administrative expenses of intermediary organizations. Local institutions developed to the capacity level of external NGOs would be extremely cost effective and directly accountable to the community. Being local - with local staff and resources -- even the little administrative expenses incurred on the program would also directly or indirectly benefit the local population.

The model that IRSP intends to consolidate and replicate is a unique rural development model in the sense that:

• It develops institutions both at the grassroots and meso level
• It develops local NGO, working for local people in a cost effective manner
• It provides a governance structure - like RCD - which is from the grassroots. Not even a single community member can be found on the Board of Directors of any of the external NGOs
• Due to governance by the Board of Directors elected and nominated directly from the community, the program is more aware and responsive to the community needs, and also more accountable to the community than any other community development program
• Presence of women community members on the board of local organizations provides an opportunity to true and actual representation of the marginalized women in the program area
• Unlike external NGOs -- working either in isolation in a single village, or in scattered regions, hundreds of miles apart from one another - this unique model integrates development activities over a wide range of geographically adjacent areas under six or seven centrally coordinated regional umbrella bodies (RDOs)
• Functionally the Local NGO is so flexible that its regional offices (RDOs) are allowed to sign independent contracts with the government, donors and other partner organizations according to their implementation capacity and at the same time they jointly implement regional development programs in a coordinated manner
• Under the government's new devolution of power plan, such a model would be more effective for good local governance because unlike other programs, this local development program has the flexibility to not only have the Local Government elected and non-elected officials on its BoD, but also to work in close collaboration with Local Government and other actors interested in local governance for regional development
• This is a model that has now an exit strategy and can be effectively replicated elsewhere within 4-5 years period, during which it would develop a similar local organization for local development
• Consolidation and promotion of this model would turn the focus from expensive external inputs through external NGOs to building local human resources for managing local development and local governance on a sustainable basis. This is a good opportunity to build on the experience and work done by Pak-German IRDP for 17 long years and consolidate and replicate a unique rural development model. This is need of the hour. Every poverty stricken and marginalized region needs such local institutions, which would remain there after phasing out of the external support programs, like Pak-German IRDP. Presently, we can find very few examples of communities still engaged in the development work in as an organized way as they were when the external program’s managerial and technical support was available