LPAC meeting at Ghodaghodi Municipality, Kailali Nepal
The meetings of LPAC were conducted in 14 working R/Municipalities of 4 Districts: Kailali, Kanchapur, Doti, Surkhet and Kalikot in November 2023. The partners LI-BIRD, Forward Looking, CMC and KOSHISH organized these meetings in close coordination with respective local governments. The overall objective of the meetings was to review and analyze the progress and review achievement of the concerned project/s, analyze the status of resource utilization of the project, and provide policy and operational feedback to the project stakeholders for fulfilling the desired results by the end of the project.
The LPAC meetings include the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Chief Administrative Officer, ward president, ward members, head/representatives from different units of office of R/municipalities like Livestock Service, Agriculture, Education, women and children, Health, Self-employment, and other key stakeholders like representatives from DMC, Agriculture Knowledge Center, cooperatives, seed bank, self-help group, NFDN, like-minded organization were also invited in the LPAC meetings. Before the meetings, joint monitoring visits were conducted where all the LPAC members including other key stakeholders were divided into small groups and visited the different project sites and interacted with the beneficiaries. The objectives of the Joint Monitoring visit were to observe the real ground scenario- what has changed in the communities and people´s lives, know the perception of the beneficiaries and create the possibilities for further collaboration.
Following the joint monitoring visit, LPAC meetings were held in the presidency of the Mayor/Deputy Mayor of the respective R/municipality. The program officer of the respective partners welcomed all the members and presented the project progress (program and finance), major achievements, coordination and collaboration with LG, challenges, best practices, and lessons learned. Other important agendas such as cost-sharing/mutual funds with local government, project ownership, and sustainability of the project’s outcome were also discussed. The LPAC members shared their findings from the field visit and provided various constructive feedback for the effectiveness of the project intervention.
Ms. Jamuna Bohora, Vice Chairperson, Jorayel RM, Doti highlighted the need for the conservation of local landraces and the promotion of biodiversity in the community. Further, she shared that as decided in the last LPAC meeting, Palika has allocated a budget for riverbed farming and leasehold farming in cost-sharing/mutual fund with LI-BIRD this fiscal year. Similarly, Mr. Nirmal Rana, Chairperson, Laljhadi RM, Kanchanpur expressed his enthusiasm to collaborate with LI-BIRD in irrigation support and commercial vegetable farming.
Mr. Khadak Bahadur Rawat, Mayor, Ghodaghodi Municipality, Kailali shared that the Municipality has allocated some budget to a Self-help group for income-generating activities. Similarly, Mr. Jit Bahadur Chaudhary, head of a health unit, Janaki Rural Municipality, Kailai expressed that before the implementation of the mental health project, we were unaware of mental health issues but nowadays we have started keeping records of them and providing mental health services. Likewise, it was found that students of persons with disability were very happy with the educational support from Forward-Looking. Local governments and other stakeholders have appreciated the intervention of Felm Nepal and they expect continuous support in the same working area.