Directorate of Community Development and Poverty Eradication Programmes

The Directorate is responsible for community economic empowerment, special programmes implementation, early childhood development programmes and management of the Community Empowerment Centres. The Directorate is further responsible for increasing the access of persons with disabilities to education, employment, health, and other services, as well as strengthening the implementation of national and international legal frameworks on disability and ensuring the integration of marginalized communities into the mainstream of society and the economy.

The Directorate has six divisions that provide the following services:

Division: Community Empowerment Programmes

The Division offers a comprehensive range of services aimed at community empowerment and development. These services include supporting community members with materials and equipment for Income-Generating Activities (IGA), conducting mobilization meetings on community development activities, building the capacity of IGA recipients and members of the Women in Business Association (WBA), appraising IGAs for possible support, monitoring and assessing supported IGAs, providing technical support to the Women in Business Association, equipping eligible IGA beneficiaries with production skills, facilitating the most effective use of Community Empowerment Centres, providing IGA beneficiaries or Micro-Entrepreneurs with stalls to market or sell their products, and providing feedback upon receipt of requests for community functions, training workshops, accommodations, and other recreational activities.

Division: Early Childhood Development

The Division delivers a suite of services focused on Early Childhood Development (ECD) initiatives within communities. These services include providing technical and advisory support on ECD, offering Educarers training to ECD center heads, parents, and the community, ensuring the delivery of quality integrated ECD services, establishing Integrated ECD operational structures, administering subsidies to Educarers, conducting assessments of ECD centres and subsidized Educarers, and monitoring Integrated Early Childhood Development (IECD) programs and service provision.

Division: Community Development Centre

The Division offers a range of services aimed at fostering economic empowerment and development within communities. These services include identifying and mapping out community/village and regional economic competitive advantages, providing business stalls to IGA beneficiaries/Micro Entrepreneurs for marketing or selling their products, collecting, recording, and depositing revenue for the usage of CDC facilities, leasing Regional Community Empowerment Facilities for community functions, training workshops, accommodations, and other recreational activities, training IGA beneficiaries on value addition and facilitating business exposure, and providing technical support to Women in Business Associations (WBAs).

Division: Special Programmes Implementation

The Division offers comprehensive services to support community and regional economic development. This includes identifying and mapping out competitive advantages in community/village and regional economies, coordinating the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of special programs, and organizing resource mobilization activities to facilitate the implementation of these special programs.

Division: Disability Affairs

The Division offers comprehensive services to support individuals with disabilities and promote disability rights. This includes advocating for and raising awareness on disability issues, coordinating the implementation of disability mainstreaming plans, identifying, registering, and referring persons with disabilities to improve access to services, issuing recommendation letters to persons with disabilities to access socio-economic services, assessing and providing financial support to students with disabilities, providing individual support to persons with severe disabilities, and facilitating disability mainstreaming at regional and national levels.

Division: Marginalized Communities

The Division delivers essential services to uplift marginalized communities. This includes registering and maintaining records for marginalized groups, organizing awareness programs to advocate for their human rights, facilitating the acquisition of National Identification Documents, providing financial support and transportation for marginalized students, assisting in land acquisition, ensuring access to basic services such as health, education, and sanitation, distributing food parcels, arranging decent funeral services, planning and developing programs to enhance their livelihoods, mobilizing resources, and monitoring the implementation of socio-economic projects.