Technical assistance for capacity-building support to the Ghana Social Opportunities project (GSOP) 1. Summary Ghana Social Opportunities Project Project Development Objective: The objectives of the Project are to improve targeting in social protection spending, increase access to conditional cash transfers nationwide, increase access to employment and cash-earning opportunities for the rural poor during the agricultural off-season, and improve economic and social infrastructure in target districts. Component One: Rationalize National Social Protection Policy. (US$2.5 million) This component would provide support to the government to help redirect its social protection expenditures to the most effective areas and reduce those in less effective activities. This would allow greater coverage of the poor despite current fiscal constraints in the wake of current and future economic crises. Component Two: Labor Intensive Public Works (LIPW). (US$56 million) The objective of this component is to provide targeted rural poor households with access to employment and income-earning opportunities. This pertains particularly to seasonal labor demand shortfalls that is, the agricultural off-season from November to March/April, and in response to external shocks, through rehabilitation and maintenance of public or community infrastructure. The aim is to maximize local employment while rehabilitating productive infrastructure assets. Component Three: Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Program (LEAP). (US$20 million) The main objective of this component is to support the full rollout of the pilot phase of the LEAP program by strengthening its management and administration, providing technical assistance to improve targeting, providing cash transfers to beneficiaries under LEAP, and providing incentives to ensure that GoG's annual budget allocations are sufficient. Component Four: Capacity Building. (US$4.1 million) The objective of this component is to create capacity at the national and local levels to implement the National Social Protection Strategy (NSPS) in selected project districts, with the view of enabling a gradual scaling-up and targeting at the national level. This component will therefore implicitly strengthen GoG's decentralization program. Several distinct sets of capacity-building activities will be ' supported. Component Five: Project Management and Coordination. (US$6.5 million) The institutions, structures, and capacities of the Government of Ghana will serve as the foundation for project management and coordination to support the implementation of the Social Opportunities Project. 2. ILO contribution Formulation of a national policy on labor intensive works Objective: To provide a draft policy for decent jobs in labor intensive works. The policy should be formulated in such a way that wherever the labor intensive approach is technically feasible and cost-effective the technology should be adopted. It should target the poor and marginalized sectors of Ghana to offer increasing employment opportunities and income generation in a number of ways through encouragement of the substitution of labor for capital and the use of "labor friendly" technologies. Imperative is that it ensures that Government procurement favors the use of local resources and employment generation. Other important features of the policy would be to find ways to stimulate and support small scale enterprises to make use of the technology. Capacity building through training in support of component 2 (LIPW) Objective: To strengthen the capacity of the Koforidua Training Centre (KTC) to enable it to cater for the demand for training within the project (component 2 LIPW). This includes training of trainers at the KTC, training of local contractors and consultants, district authorities and government staff in the management of labour-intensive projects