My name is Rupa Rana. I have been working on the Ward Citizen Forum and as a social mobiliser of the Poverty Alleviation Fund, a government-funded project in Dhaubadhi VDC, Nawalparasi. These two roles have given me the opportunity to work closely with social and development related activities in my community. 

The Local Governance Act 1998 has provisions to develop plans from the settlement level with full participation of local communities. But in practice, there was no collection of plans from the settlement level. Plans that came in were just from pockets of local influential leaders. 

The community people would come to me and ask me why the VDC does not allocate budget and plans for our community, which was a genuine concern. It made me sad to see some settlements never receive any allocations from the VDC budget, and they were never part of the development process.

This year, I got an opportunity to receive training about the Participatory Planning Process (PPP) facilitated by Isai Samaj Nepal, a UMN partner. The training has equipped me to deal with the planning process, and has built my confidence to teach the community people about this important issue. 

I have helped them to understand the process and have made them aware of the VDC council and the ward-level gathering. The training has helped people to identify their problems and make plans based on their actual needs and issues. A member from each household participated in the planning workshop. I felt very happy to help them understand their roles as citizens in the planning process, and now they have been successful in getting the VDC budget for their community development plans.