It is very inspiring to see that the action plans that the people identified through Village Book which mainly used participatory tools are becoming a reality. Village Book process is ActionAid Myanmar signature approached in development planning where people identify their problems, came up with solutions and plans to concretize them using various PRA tools such as Problem Tree, Social Maps, Seasonal Calendars, Cobwebs, Venn Diagram and many more others. These tools are now at the Networked Toolbox.

A recent Village Book Development Plan revisits and assessments were conducted in 3 LRPs covering 83 villages with a total of 4,801 households and a total population of 45,743 . The people identified 931 action plans or projects and a total of 650 of which were implemented. Thus a 69.8 % has already implemented with a total funds raise amounting to 3,054,359 USD. This amount was sourced by the community from different sources and they also have contributed their own counterpart. In the pie chart , we can see where the money comes from or what are the fund sources and what percentage and institution are involved.

Very inspiring to see that the people through the Village Books maps and drawings (product of the PRA tools) they were able to convince the government to support and finance their priority needs and 41 % of the funding comes from them. Only 31 % comes Action Aids ad partners and others. It can be seen in the next graph the different actions plans that people identified classified into categories or sectors and the percentage it is implemented. It can be seen that Capacity Buildings usually in forms of trainings /seminars /provision of equipment or tools has the highest implementation of 85% in the plan were accomplished. It is followed by water, livelihood and education with 79%, 74% and 66% were implemented. These water projects include water dam, gravity flow pipes and wheels. Before , people in the dry zone could hardly get potable water. Livelihood projects include Climate Resilience Sustainable Agriculture, Social enterprises and other non farm /off farm activities to increase their income. Education projects usually school buildings, community library and others.

Read a more in-depth version of this on this link: Success of Village Book funding