Rural Investments RuralInvest, a decentralized rural investment support package, has evolved over the last four years in response to frequent requests from institutions seeking assistance in managing community and local-level rural investment funds and programmes. The concept of developing a standardized tool kit that would offer a range of instruments to support decentralized activities in rural investment, arose from a series of technical assistance assignments undertaken by the FAO Investment Centre . As it grew, RuralInvest made increasing use of technical expertise in Latin America, particularly from key professionals in projects and organizations using and testing the tool kit. RuralInvest places particular emphasis on community or group participation in the investment process, as well as on ensuring the long-term sustainability of the proposed investments in technical, financial, administrative and environmental terms. Through the use of standard formats, with supporting help systems, RuralInvest ensures that all identification and preparation activities adequately consider all relevant factors, and generate uniform proposals, facilitating the technical review process and financing approval.
Training is supported by the use of case studies and practice exercises.
FAO encourages institutions utilizing RuralInvest to develop an in-house training and support capacity that will reduce dependency on outside technical assistance. Two more modules are in preparation, covering Project Implementation, and Monitoring and Evaluation. In some cases, alternative systems are already in use, while in others, the user organization is only active in certain areas of the project cycle. Manuals and guides have been published by RUTA in Spanish for both existing modules, and are in the process of being made available in English. Within the Participatory Diagnosis and Project Identification Module , instruments are deliberately restricted to those that can be used at community level by local organizers, NGO staff or extension officers.