How can key services be delivered to poor people? Despite many initiatives to restructure, decentralise and privatise surprisingly few services are available in rural areas. Decentralised institutions, while being closer to the people, often capture the resources and become the end-point of development rather than facilitating local development.

CARE's work on community-based approaches to service delivery offers a model for pro-poor service delivery that delivery offers a model for pro-poor service delivery that promotes empowerment of rural communities. Through these approaches, CARE aims to strengthen the relationships between communities, service providers and government, with the aim of building the capacity of community institutions to demand, manage and direct services that support local development. CARE's work on this theme is multi-sectoral: encompassing Farmer Extension Facilitators under the TEAM project to peer educators in its SHARP! (Sexual Health and Rights Promotion) programme, to improving prevention, care, support and mitigation measures for those affected and infected by HIV/AIDS in the high-risk border towns of South Africa and Lesotho.

CARE is working with the development organisation Khanya-managing rural change on a joint action-learning programme on the theme of community-based workers. The aim is to promote good practice and more widespread adoption of the community-based workers as a way of getting services to poor people. See also
Khanya's webpage on community-based workers:

One example of community-based service delivery is the TEAM project, Training in Environmental and Agricultural Management, which CARE managed in Lesotho (Mohale's Hoek and Quthing). It was supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). TEAM worked to respond to some of the underlying causes of livelihood insecurity by developing an extension approach that promotes self-reliance and problem solving among poor farmers, and seeks to empower rural households. The project also provides training and capacity building for community institutions and marketing groups to help them address some of their constraints to development. In the final phase of the programme, CARE developed a programme of lesson learning, documentation, communication and advocacy on the theme of community-based service delivery in Lesotho and Southern Africa. Key documents developed include:

• Overview of TEAM, its history and core approaches Read more:
• Evaluation of the impact of TEAM on rural livelihoods Read more:

• Assessment of client participation, especially by the poor, in TEAM. Read more:

• Cost-effectiveness of TEAM and other approaches to agricultural extension in Lesotho Read more:
• Report of a Regional Symposium comparing TEAM and other community-based worker models in various sectors (HIV/AIDs, legal, health, agriculture, literacy etc). Read more: