CA Brazil- Bahia Urban Dev Program-PAT The strategy of intervention of PAT to achieve the proposed objective is based on the experience of the technical assistance given to the Ribeira Azul Program. This previous experience has represented a laboratory of operational procedures and approaches to meet the growing social and economic demands of the urban poor, guiding the preparation of a large scale intervention such as the Viver Melhor / BIRD Program.  It is the government's intention to replicate, through PAT, the integrated, participatory and area-based methodology applied in the Ribeira Azul Program. PAT consists of Technical Assistance to SEDUR and CONDER for the implementation of Viver Melhor / BIRD. The institutional arrangement utilized by the Ribeira Azul Technical and Social Assistance Project (PATS) contributed to strengthening the relationship between the Government of Bahia, the Italian Government, the World Bank and the Cities Alliance. Moreover, it influenced the Italian Government's decision to support the State of Bahia in the implementation of a large scale program, Viver Melhor/BIRD. The Ribeira Azul TA project also influenced the institutional design of the new project and enabled the formation of a group of professionals with experience and skills in planning, coordinating and executing physical and social actions, which will be able to provide technical and methodological assistance for scaling up slum upgrading under Viver Melhor/BIRD. In the framework of the Viver Melhor/BIRD Program that was prepared by the state government, a new institutional arrangement is being proposed. In order to implement a multi-sector Program, the proposed arrangement details the organization of SEDUR and CONDER and the functions of each institution involved in the implementation of the Program. The arrangement covers three organizational levels: i) the strategic level; ii) the executive and operational coordination level; and, iii) the local coordination and execution level. Figure 1 shows how the technical assistance project (PAT) will relate to the proposed institutional arrangement for the overall program. As in the Ribeira Azul PATS, the Italian NGO AVSI will assume technical and administrative responsibility for the funds and will be co-responsible, together with SEDUR/CONDER, for the methodology and administration of the Technical and Methodological Assistance Project (PAT). The interventions to benefit from the support of this Technical Assistance Project will be in project areas in the cities of Salvador (Ribeira Azul/Cobre and PituaÃ§u) and IlhÃ©us (Malhado). In each project area at least one field office will be set up to be a visible reference point for support and dialogue with the residents of the intervention area. The office, housed in a facility called "Casa do Viver Melhor",  will serve as the coordination facility for the program and daily contact with the residents will facilitate continuous dialogue. The technicians in the office will be well-placed to familiarize themselves with the problems faced by the community, gathering information about the doubts and difficulties related to the Viver Melhor/BIRD Program and the availability and quality of other public services. To manage actions in the Ribeira Azul/Cobre project area, CONDER and AVSI will continue the successful experience of the PRA, with the co-management based on joint technical and methodological responsibility for the implementation and management of the development actions to be financed by Viver Melhor/BIRD. In the PituaÃ§u and Malhado project areas, CONDER will be responsible for management and will contract consulting companies for the planning and implementation of the work. The technical assistance project will provide support to CONDER throughout the project cycle. Regarding the social actions, executing agencies will be contracted (NGOs and/or companies selected competitively), with their work supervised with the support of AVSI. The requirements identified in each field office will be presented to the Executive and the Steering Committees - comprising project agencies and departments of the state government and the municipalities. The field office will become a key communication link between the community and the government and, as such, will contribute to the development of the particular project area. However, to ensure effective participation, information concerning the project needs to be made available so that resident groups and families can familiarize themselves with the project being implemented and be in a better position to discuss with the participating agencies. The urban and housing designs and plans, social plans and reports therefore will be made available for public consultation at the field office. As in the case of Ribeira Azul, the Viver Melhor/BIRD Program will institutionalize community representation channels. The plan for Viver Melhor/BIRD is to increase the level of participation through a Local Development Forum consisting of representatives from the Steering Committee (SEDUR, CONDER, DGCS, Cities Alliance), the World Bank, the municipalities, AVSI, the managing agency for the social programs, together with local residents and CBO's. At least one Forum will be set up in each project area, in which the actions related to the planning and implementation of the project will be discussed on a regular basis. The Forum will thus provide an ideal venue for dialogue between the Project's coordinators and the beneficiaries. In addition to the Project activities in Bahia described above, the World Bank/ Cities Alliance task teams will manage two further activities: an independent monitoring & evaluation of the Project and the preparation and dissemination of information about the Project. It is envisaged that these activities will be financed separately through a $250,000 contribution that is sought from the Cities Alliance Core Fund. The independent monitoring & evaluation activities will continue and complement the work undertaken in the Ribeira Azul Program and during the preparation of VM/BIRD by the World Bank project team and a team from the University of Trento, Italy. This will include input from the World Bank in ensuring the technical rigor of the monitoring and evaluation under the project. The project includes a comprehensive M&E scheme that includes a framework for monitoring and evaluation, detailed outline of institutional arrangements, costs, indicators, and data collection instruments.  Monitoring will be carried out on a regular basis, with longer-term impacts to be evaluated for a sample of communities at three points in time following Project implementation.  The M&E system is designed to focus on capturing direct benefits in the selected communities. This plan is linked to a broader World Bank initiative - Development Impact Evaluation (DIME), aimed at increasing the number of Bank projects with impact evaluation components in particular strategic areas and themes, including urban upgrading.  Through the link with DIME, the methodological approaches and innovations from carrying out impact evaluations in the Bahia Integrated Urban Development Project as well as similar projects in other countries will be shared, along with the lessons learned on the longer term impacts of integrated urban upgrading on poverty reduction. The knowledge dissemination activities will be used to help enable the national government and state and local governments in Brazil and elsewhere to promote integrated social and physical interventions for the reduction of urban poverty.