Department of Community Development

Background

The department of Community Development was established in 2007 following the restructuring of the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development.

The department became operational on 1st July, 2008 with two divisions of Community Development and Literacy each headed by Assistant Commissioners. 

The Department is critical for service delivery in all sectors thereby ensuring that communities are mobilized to uptake services offered and are able to demand access, manage and sustain them.

Rationale

The Department exists to promote participation of Communities in Community Development and Literacy initiatives.

This is achieved through Community Development Officers (CDOs) at District, Municipal and Sub-county levels. 

The CDOs play a critical role in enhancing productivity and incomes of the rural communities. 

The CDOs are change agents who interface with communities at the grass-root level and are responsible for imparting non-formal skills to communities, disseminating information on available services (health, education) and employment opportunities as well as organizing communities to form development groups to engage in IGAs, NAADS and SACCOS.  

The emphasis is on ensuring that the population is functionally literate, their skills developed, and communities mobilized to demand and uptake government projects and programmes.

 Institutions

The department works hand in hand with the National Library of Uganda which was established by NLU Act of 2003. 

This is a statutory body that provides a reading culture in the country. The NLU is the National Bibliographic Control Agency responsible for ensuring legal deposit of materials by publishers, publishing the National Bibliography of Uganda, allocating the International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) and International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN) to publishers. For more information, visit: http://www.nlu.go.ug/

Scope of services

The departmental services are operational country wide through the Local Government staff.  At National level the department is charged with the following:

  • Formulating and disseminating policies and developing and disseminating community mobilization strategy and assist local governments to implement
  • Developing and disseminating guidelines and regulations and setting standards on community development work and functional literacy
  • Monitoring and evaluating policy implementation on community development and functional literacy
  • Developing plans for mobilization for community participation
  • Developing relevant functional literacy material
  • Training for capacity building of local governments and institutions involved in the implementation of community development and literacy initiatives 
  • Developing plans, budgets and reports for resource mobilization
  • Providing technical advice, support supervision and training to local governments on community development and literacy