Category: Blog

The above phrase is familiar to many of us. We know it’s a must to have a vision and bring it on to reality with our action.

Nevertheless, prior to action, there should be a clear vision and COMMITTED strongly believes that ‘SMART Visioning Paves Path to Achieving Sustainable Development.’

Whilst working for developing Comprehensive Plans of municipalities (Damak, Bhimeshwor, Tansen, Waling & Tikapur), COMMITTED in the month of December, visited all five of them to conduct visioning workshops among municipality officials – both elected representatives and departmental administrative staffs. The workshop reflected on the importance of having SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Bound) plans and conducted various group activities to assist municipalities in creating their vision and mission statements which will be later conjoined in their comprehensive plan as well.

“Vision without Action is merely a Dream. Action without Vision just passes the Time. Vision with Action can Change the World.”  

– Joel A. Barker

In addition to the visioning exercise, COMMITTED also verified sectoral policies and prioritized municipalities’ future programs according to their nature as: short, medium and long term. Verifying policies of sectors, such as Land Use and Settlement, Heritage Conservation, Parks and Recreation, Health, Disaster and Emergency Response, Transportation, Education, Local Economy Development, Public Works, Environment and Natural Resources, was very instrumental to add any missing agendas and feedbacks.

We are hopeful that the visions which each municipality has envisioned, will surely yield greater impact through their robust execution. We are optimistic that these municipalities’ actions in comply with their visions will bring sustainable development and be role models among others across the country.

Following the completion of Focus Group Discussions (FGD) in five municipalities, there was in-house sorting preparation. Based on the feedbacks and information received during FGD, municipal profiles, national & local policies and international examples; SWOT analysis was prepared in order to identify municipalities’ strength and weakness along with opportunities and threats. It comprised of 12 different sectors namely: Land Use & Settlement, Health, Disaster and Emergency Response, Transportation, Education, Local Economy Development, Public Works, Environment & Natural Resources, Parks & Recreation, Gender Equality & Social Inclusion (GESI), Transparency & Accountability and Heritage Conservation.

After the SWOT analysis, a team of COMMITTED’s program staffs visited Bhimeshwor, Damak, Tikapur, Tansen and Waling municipalities to verify SWOT report with key informants such as Mayors, Deputy Mayors, Chief Administrative Officers, Ward chairpersons, relevant municipal sectoral staffs, and interested stakeholders.

The participants in all five municipalities gave their active participation and provided with resourceful feedbacks and missing agendas. The discussion also helped to analyze municipalities existing policies along with realization of formulation of additional important acts and guidelines. Local level participation, during the meeting, correspondingly helped to emphasize on the feeling of ownership and ignite awareness of duties and responsibilities among representatives.

Furthermore, the SWOT in itself helped representatives to evaluate municipalities’ potency and limitations, which directed a pathway for new programs and project implementation.

The SWOT analysis is an important step to the development of long term Comprehensive Plan and is under the project ‘Enhancement of Local Government Service Delivery & Economic Governance’.