ANNEX A: TECHNICAL APPLICATION TEMPLATE

AMANAT AFGHANISTAN
USAID CONTRACT NUMBER AID-306-H-17-00003

Instructions: Please carefully review directions and guidelines provided in the APS & in the shaded
text blocks. The applicant is required to meet the limit of characters necessary for each section.
Application must be signed by an authorized agent of the applicant. All application documents shall
be completed using the font “Source Sans Pro”, and the font size must not be smaller than 11.

SECTION I. BASIC ORGANIZATION INFORMATION

1. Organization’s legal name: Afghanistan Development and Rehabilitation Organization (ADRO)

2. Date organization was founded and registration number: 2005, Registered with Ministry of
Economy under the license Number: 573

3. Contact information and organization structure:

Organizational Structure – List key contact persons as well as key individuals, founding members
(president, directors, treasurer, etc.). The stated members are required to be authorized for action
representing the organization in decision making, currently existing and verifiable.

Key contact person(s) and title: Dr.Najeebullah Waziri, Director

Office address: Karte Parwan, Next to Naderia Office phone: 0799727292
High School
Mobile: 0799727292 Fax:
Email: adroafghanistan@gmail.com Website:

4. Briefly describe the organization’s vision, mission and objectives : (No more than 1,000 characters)

ADRO’s mission is to contribute in developing, upliftment and self-sustaining Afghan society with
special emphasis to women and children through Monitoring in the sectors of construction
,education, agriculture and other community development programs.

ADRO vision is to see a developed Afghanistan with every person has equal rights to live in this
world with dignity.
Afghanistan Development and Rehabilitation Organization (ADRO) is a registered Afghan
development non-governmental and non-profit organization. Established in 2005, ADRO has
assisted and contributed towards the improvement of social and economic conditions of Afghans.
ADRO has implemented more than 30 projects in partnership with several UN, USAID and other
foreign donor agencies.

Three decades of continued war and internal instability in Afghanistan brought up displacement of
thousands of people and destruction of political, economic, social, cultural and educational
infrastructure of the country. A group of afghan intellectuals and professionals felt the need to
establish organization. After extensively brain storming, study and research the efforts eventually

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became successfully when ADRO was established in 2005. Since its establishment ADRO is striving
to reduce poverty , bring gender equity and social and economic development in the country.

ADRO work’s philosophy is to create, apply and spread local Afghan knowledge and insight for
improved policy making and sustainable development in Afghanistan. ADRO prides itself in
extensive experience in three main areas of work including research, monitring and CSOs capacity
building. ADRO methodology is different because, it is guided by a participatory approach in order
to elicit genuine Afghan people participation and outputs.

Over the last one decade of its existence, ADRO conducted monitoring of public infrastructure
projects and identified the use of substandard materials in construction, deviation from technical
specifications, budget overruns and other project implementation anomalies which were reported
to higher authorities for corrective actions. Many of ADROs’ monitoring activities have had high
profile successes. ADRO provided social accountability training to several community
representatives (Local Monitors), Which not only introduce them on what the corruption is but also
provide them the self-awareness on how to detect and prevent the corruption itself in the
infrastructures projects by enhancing the knowledge of monitoring by the community, from the
community and for the community.

The organization’s advocacy work helped broker a change in citizen norms and behavior. Founding
member recalls that “earlier, people would accept whatever they got, but we taught them to ask
questions and engage officials. It was their right because public money had to be guarded,
monitored, and accounted for. We demanded accountability from our officials.”

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5. List contact information for five (5) references from previous donors or organizations
(U.S.G and others) with whom your organization has collaborated during the last three to five years.
Personal emails are not accepted, only official emails, phone numbers and donor information are
required.

Donor Agency or Nature of Relationship or Start & End

Contact Person
Organization Title of Project, Location Dates of
Collaboration
Creative Associates Peaceful Election Advocacy June to Name & Position: Fahimullah Amin, Grants
Manager
International/USAID Campaigns in Kunar and December,2013
Kandahar provinces
Email: fahim@crea-cci.com

Tel: +93 799 727227

DAI/USAID/ASI-E Capacity Building Name & Position: Dr.Shah Mahmood

Assessment and Training
2014 April - Email: Shah.M@asi-east.com
District Government
October

Tel:

Relief International Campaigns for Community Name& Position: Mohuiddeen Sadrey, Program
Manager
in Afghanistan Awareness on Sustainable
Agriculture September
Email: M.sadrey@ri.org
2016- February
2017

Tel: +93 788 111 540

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SECTION II. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
1. Title of the proposed activity (not to exceed 500 characters):

Promoting transparency and accountability in public school building construction projects through
community based monitoring program

2. Duration of the Activity (Total number of months):

12 Months

2. Target audience: (For example, directorate, ministry, CSOs, youth, citizens, university students, any
entity, etc)
Ministry of Education, Provincial Education Directorate, Citizens

(a) Total Number of Beneficiaries:

Direct (Male & Female) Male: 70 # Female: 70 #

Indirect (Male & Female) Male: 35,000 # Female:35,000 #

(b) Demographic: (please specify if any marginalized group is targeted)

People with disabilities: #

Elderly: #

4. The geographical location of the proposed action: (Province, districts, village, etc)

Nangarhar, Balkh and Herat Provinces

5. Objectives of the proposed action: (Propose achievable and measurable objectives relevant to the
activity) - (not to exceed 1000 characters per objective)

5.1: Monitoring of 70 school construction projects, through community based monitoring program
in Nangarhar, Balkh and Herat provinces, in order to improve the quality, timeliness and value for
money.

5.2: Establishing provincial monitoring boards in Nangarhar, Balkh and Herat provinces to promote
constructive engagement with provincial education department and citizens in performance
monitoring and hold the implementing agency accountable for taking corrective actions against
identified substandard works, thereby enhancing transparency, accountability and sense of
ownership among the community beneficiaries.

5.3: Building the capacity of local monitors to undertake construction monitoring in four important
aspects of school buildings namely in preconstruction, construction, post construction and
conduciveness to learning, using easy-to –use community base monitoring manual and checklists.

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6. Assessment of the Problem (Clearly state the problem(s) you are seeking to address.) - (not to exceed
3,000 characters)

The government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has fulfilled to the extent possible, the people’s
Demand in accessing to quality education services, which is a fundamental human right and a major
driver of personal and social development.

Since 2001, there has been significant progress in enrollment of children in schools, currently more
than nine million children are studying in 16,105 schools, of which almost 40% are girls are
students. However, there are still three millions of school age children who do not have access to
educational services. Therefore, the Ministry and its national and international partners have a long
way ahead to provide basic educational services to all children of Afghanistan.

The influx of refugees returning to country and high population growth resulted in rapid increase in
enrollment which put tremendous demand of new schools and the existing schools became more
crowded and over utilized. Of the 16,105 schools only about 7911 currently have school buildings,
with the remaining 8194 schools have no building and students studying under temporary shelter ,
tent or in open spaces.

To Address the School building shortage across the country, The Government of Afghanistan has
put the construction of school buildings in its top priority and aimed to construct 6000 new school
buildings over the course of upcoming three years in order to provide conducive learning
environment to the school children’s of Afghanistan. To achieve this target, the construction work
for 1946 new buildings and 701 missing items are planned under EQRA Program funded by the
World Bank and other 439 schools are planned by Ministry of Urban Development and Land
through government discretionary budget. The government also taken a loan of 50 Million USD
from Saudi Arabia for construction of 500 more schools. Moreover, the government is exploring
various mechanisms to fund the construction work of the balance schools.

Given that the significant portion of the ministry of education’s budget is spent on the construction
of school buildings, it is vulnerable to high level of corruption at the political, administrative
(central and local), and classroom levels. The corruption exists in every phase of the project
lifecycle, from needs assessment to procurement, contract implementation to monitoring and takes
various forms such as theft, embezzlement, diversion, and other types of wastage and loss in the
system. There are disconcerting reports on substandard quality classrooms, ghost schools, time
delays, over budget and premature deterioration of school buildings.

Arguably, the most wide-ranging and consistent investigations of corruption related to the Afghan
education system (and specifically USAID support) have been done by SIGAR. A range of SIGAR
assessment reports and correspondence, from 2009-2016, have highlighted key vulnerability to
corruption issues in school construction projects including insufficient planning, poor safety, poor
quality control, waste, fraud and abuse of funds, structural damage soon after construction,
deficiencies in the construction of Teacher Training facilities, and ghost schools.

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Similarly, the Independent joint anti-corruption monitoring and evaluation committee (MEC)
conducted ‘Vulnerability to Corruption Assessment’ of the Ministry of Education which reveals that
the oversight of school building construction projects, monitoring of the progress and verification
of quality in remote, hard to reach settings are vulnerable to the corruptions. The MEC Reports
highlighted that MoE projects in insecure provinces have not been effectively monitored which
paves the way for corruption and the creation of “ghost schools.” Another vulnerability to
corruption is local social conflict regarding the land or quality of the site where the school is to be
built – this may result in projects that are vulnerable to corruption.

Multiple senior officials interviewed by MEC indicated that there is lack of transparency in
procurement process and contracts were either sold by the successful bidder to another bidder, or
distributed among several bidders who were operating as part of a cartel.

According to MEC Report, there is corruption between Provincial Educational Directorates with the
construction companies through making business deals which negatively affects the quality of
projects. The report also states that the engineers who are responsible for monitoring and
evaluation of the construction projects (schools building) from MoE side collude with the
implementer company by fraudulently introducing costly variations and extensions after the
project has been awarded or approving the use of substandard materials or processes to raise
individual profit margins. The MoE engineers know the gaps of the project and the low quality of
the project as they regularly monitor, but they collude with company and make their report
positive.

The review of Construction projects contract shows that the contractor is reluctant to deliver the
project on timely manner as per the project schedule and 98 percent of the projects get extension
which is opposite of procurement law and they have not been charged any punishment by the
Ministry as the Ministry high officials are part of corruption.

The MEC Reports mention that weak institutional capacities, lack of transparency and no oversight
by community has resulted in corruption, loss of scarce government resources and poor quality of
school construction projects which poses great risk to the entire education system outcome, erodes
social trust and worsens inequality. The communities were not engaged in school related matters,
not allowed to oversee the implementation of school construction projects nether have any
information about the project scope of work. There is no formalize regular and substantive
meetings between schools and communities, for involvement in construction related quality
deviations and suggested solutions. As the ministry of educations efforts in fighting corruption
prove to be ineffective, for this reason, the citizens are encouraged to get involved in curbing this
menace by participating in monitoring government school construction projects. School shuras’
advocacy, cooperation and coordination with their wider communities can work towards
improving access to quality school buildings, promote local ownership and cultural diversity – as
well as reducing corruption.

International research provides evidence in support of the impact of transparency and oversight in
construction projects. For example, the Kecamatan Development project in Indonesia involved
close local oversight which produced savings of between 25 to 56 percent over conventional
infrastructure projects. Similarly, in Bangladesh a study of community oversight of infrastructure
projects found that costs and completion times of projects were more than 25 percent lower while

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the longevity of assets were four times longer with community involvement. (Kenny 2010).
Evidence can be found that transparency, combined with oversight can play a significant role in
reducing corruption in the construction sector. Data from World Bank financed roads contracts in
28 countries suggest that those countries where the citizen are more able to exercise their voice
and accountability mechanisms experience lower costs in public infrastructure projects, such as
rehabilitation of roads.

There is the need to promote accountability by establishing Safe and effective monitoring systems,
by which corruption and substandard work on the project can be reported by the public, by project
staff, and by the independent assessor. Community involvement in planning, design, procurement,
construction oversight and post construction stages of school construction projects is necessary to
ensure compliance with quality, timeliness and value for money as well as to hold the implementing
agencies accountable for taking corrective actions for the identified deviations from project plans.
Combating corruption is not only the concern of the national leadership and the anti-corruption
agencies but every citizen particularly the grassroots, who should benefit from these projects. The
most pernicious impact of corruption is social damage, thus the grassroots who are the helpless
victims continue to suffer a miserable life.

7. Technical Approach: (Describe the specific activities that you will implement to address the problems
and achieve the project objectives listed above. Be sure to identify how your activities will reduce the impacts
of corruption in public services. Focus the discussion on what activities you will conduct and how you will do
it.) (not to exceed 10,000 characters)

The ADRO community based monitoring program draws on the principle of two basic collective
rights of every citizen such as the right to participate in governance and the right to information
which promotes transparency. Communities, endowed with these rights are free to intervene and
to express their will for the improvement of their life. Government institutions and
instrumentalities, as duty holders, are compelled to respond to the rightful and appropriate
demands of the people. Monitoring findings will serve as valuable inputs to government on how to
manage public resources efficiently.

Afghanistan Development Rehabilitation Organization will enter in memorandum of understanding

(MoU) with provincial education departments to implement community based monitoring program
for school construction with the aim to promote social accountability and prevent corruption in
school building construction projects through participation of volunteer community monitors,
school head and teachers, thereby enhancing transparency, accountability and efficiency in better
education services.

The Community Based monitoring team is a means for constructive engagement between
government and citizens in performance monitoring with a common objective or goal of improving
service delivery. The team will provide evidence-based reports to provincial education
departments to disclose potential corruption and substandard work in the implementation of
public school construction projects.

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The Afghanistan Development Rehabilitation Organization will build the community based
monitoring team’s capacity on the construction monitoring methodology to evaluate the project’s
quality, schedule and budget performance that are implemented in their area using easy -to - use
checklists and to hold relevant implementing authorities accountable for the exposed anomalies
in EQRA school construction projects through providing recommendations/feedback for resolving
flaws/deviations in project implementation.

ADRO will develop the easy to understand construction monitoring manual and project phase’s
checklists to equip the monitoring team members with appropriate but simplified technical skills
and pertinent information on project implementation. It is hoped that the layman community
monitors will better appreciate standard specifications on infrastructure project implementation
and thus enable them to assess substandard project outputs. Equipping and motivating them to
actively participate in social concerns will lead to an increased public oversight on school
construction projects. Tangible outputs will be measured or judged based on standards not just on
plain opinion.

The program will target monitoring of 70 schools’ construction projects for the entire period of its
construction, funded under EQRA program by volunteer community based monitoring team in
Nangarhar, Balkh and Herat provinces in order to empower citizens to take an active role in
promoting integrity and accountability.

Afghanistan Development Rehabilitation Organization will work with communities to elect

community monitors who volunteer to monitor construction projects on behalf of their
communities. The Elected community member, School Head and teachers will form a community
based monitoring team. The community based monitoring team will be trained and supported by
Afghanistan Development Rehabilitation Organization through provisioning of knowledge and
carefully designed customized monitoring tools who will monitor a series of metrics and
phenomenon related to integrity, which can illustrate the quality of construction projects and their
impact on the targeted communities.

ADRO also will document and disseminate the results and lessons of community based monitoring
program in order to raise awareness and motivate further civil society participation in monitoring
public works and other government projects

The following methodology will be used empowers citizens and increases aid effectiveness at local
levels through Community Based Monitoring program:

Selecting Communities:

The Target schools for community based monitoring will be chosen in consultation with provincial
education directorate. The recently awarded EQRA school construction projects which is located in
remote areas will be selected with preference given to girls schools.

The Afghanistan Development Rehabilitation Organization employees will meet with the
community development councils to explain the intent of the program and its benefit.

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 1) Electing Community Monitors and Forming community based monitoring team:

Each participating community will be asked to select one volunteer as community monitor. She/ He
should preferably be literate, of good reputation within the community and able to volunteer
several hours each week to monitor construction activities.

Subsequently a community based monitoring team will be formed comprise of the followings:

 Volunteer community monitor: The CDC will elect there representative and officially introduce them
as local monitors. they should be literate, well respected people in the community and well known
for their honesty.
 School head. The school principal or the school head is the highest ranking official in the school
community and thus is pivotal in the monitoring initiative. The direction and vision of the school is
usually put in his/her hands. He/ She is most accountable in ensuring the development of his/her
school and is highly interested in the prospect of new classrooms.
 Teachers. The Teachers will also elect there representative since they are one of the most affected
members of the school given that having a good classroom will make it easier for them to teach well.
With fewer students in an enclosed classroom, they wouldn’t have to strain their lungs just to get
themselves heard by the class.

2) Capacity building of community based monitoring team:

The task of an independent monitor is never easy. It requires preparations like understanding the project
cycle, program of work and the activities contained therein. The community based monitoring team also need
to know the basics and technicalities of monitoring and evaluation and do the actual monitoring activities.
Once the community based monitoring team is identified, these volunteers will receive technical and social
accountability training from ADRO staff through a briefing orientation for one week which will be divided in
the following four sessions:

Session 1: Social Training:

The members of the community based monitoring team will receive social training covering the following
topics:

 The importance of citizen participation in governance and monitoring of government services.

 The benefits of constructive engagement and collaboration with government.
 Social accountability mechanism, Varieties of Corruption, Corruption’s Factors and Consequences,
corruption awareness, community mobilization.
 Legal Frameworks against Corruption, Accountability, Transparency and Monitoring.
 The right of every child to quality school building for better education and the citizen’s role in
checking proper school building implementation.

Session 2: Training on using the Community based monitoring Manual and Checklist in school building
monitoring.

Afghanistan Development Rehabilitation Organization will prepare an easy to use construction monitoring
manual and checklists for non-technical people as a guide to monitor each stage of school building
construction such as pre-construction, construction, post construction and conduciveness to learning stages.

The objectives of this session is to allow the team enough time to learn how to use the checklist together and
to clarify areas on the checklist that need clarification

Session 3: Training on Construction Monitoring:

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After learning how to use the checklist, the community based monitoring team will further deepen their
capacity in monitoring school building through receiving training on construction monitoring which covers
material quality (Concrete, Cement, Sand, Steel, Gravel, Stone, Bricks) building techniques, and how to test the
quality of materials in simple but effective ways. The training teaches the community monitors how to use
provided monitoring tools, conduct surveys, follow checklists and collect data.

The technical trainings will assist the local monitors on how to verify quality of materials and other
Technical issues that may arise during monitoring and will orient them on the red flags they should look for
during monitoring visits.

Session 4: planning workshop.

The planning workshop will be done after the team has been trained on how to use the Checklist and the
monitoring points that need to be considered. The objective is to prepare an action plan for effective and
efficient performance of tasks and delivery of outputs. The Community based monitoring team will identify
the specific activities they must undertake to perform tasks or deliver expected outputs, the
difficulties/challenges they might encounter and the strategies they will employ to address the
difficulties/challenges.

Provincial Education Department of the ministry of education are the key stakeholders at provincial and
district levels for the projects implementation, they have the authority and responsibility to monitor projects
in the respective provinces. They are considered significantly important in supporting ADRO’s community-
based monitoring program. With this, ADRO will provide social and technical trainings to engineering
department of Nangarhar, Herat and Balkh provincial education directorate. It is hoped that it shall affect the
policies and their practices to hold the project implementers accountable, and together with the communities
to hold project implementers accountable.

3) Collecting Information

Community based monitoring team will collect all necessary project documents by requesting from
provincial education department. After collecting the project documents, community monitors conduct a
baseline survey of the community. They interview 10 respondents who are stakeholders for their project. The
survey helps introduce the monitoring program to the community & collects information on community
knowledge and participation in the project.

4) Monitoring the construction work

The Community Based Monitoring team will visit the project three times a week, meets with the site engineer,
and check the construction progress and the quality of materials using the contract, bill of quantity, and
infrastructure project blueprints. If substandard work is revealed, the community monitor with the provincial
Coordinator of Afghanistan Development Rehabilitation Organization will try to resolve the problems first
then discuss the problems with the contractor with the aim of convincing the contractor to resolve them.

In order to systemize the Community-Based Monitoring approach, ADRO will develop construction
monitoring manual which provides general information about the program structure, how monitoring works
and what principles should be used during the monitoring of infrastructure projects. This manual is used to
train the local monitors by proving the information in a user-friendly language, the technical manual teaches
the local monitors about specification of stones and its prosperities, cement and its variety, laboratory testing
methods of cement, ways of cement storage, Mortar and its variety, concrete and its properties, durability and
workability of concrete, sample testing methods for quality of concrete, the way of mixing of concrete,
different marks of concrete.. The technical training manual is developed in both Dari and Pashto languages.

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The Team will extensively use the checklist specifically designed for monitoring of construction projects
which is an easy-to-use guide for ordinary, non-technical people which they can bring during the actual
monitoring visits to the project site. This will aid the monitors in inspecting the implementation of the school
building project. The Checklists will be prepared for four major stages of a construction projects as below:

- Preconstruction stage:

The checklist will guide the monitors to assess if the planning and preparation activities before
commencement of school construction project has been carried out properly. The Monitoring team will find
out if the land documents are available and if the site is suitable for construction considering the
environmental hazards.

The Monitoring team will ascertain if pre-engineered survey was conducted and if the survey confirms that
the building to be constructed fit the land area? The Team will also receive a copy of Scope of work which
contain the components of the school buildings to be constructed and the materials to be used. It specifies the
amount and the type of supplies that the contractor should provide.
Finally the team will find out if contractor who construct the building has been chosen through a bidding
process to ensure that the government will get the cheapest price for the service.

- Construction stage

The checklist will extensively be used to monitor the construction projects to conform that the school
building construction is being done according to quality standards. The community based monitoring team
will check the workmanship and material used in earthwork, excavation, concrete works, masonry work,
carpentry works and painting.

- Post-construction stages

The Community based monitoring team will make sure that the project delivers all the required components which
was contracted and will enumerates the standard components of a complete school building. The Team will check
whether the item is present or absent.

- Conduciveness to learning

The checklists will also guide the monitoring team to check if the classroom is conducive for learning. It is
important to take note of this to ensure that the building is properly constructed to achieve its purpose. This will also
inform the infrastructure service department of the ministry of education about possible modifications for their
school building designs.
The community based monitoring team will determine if the classroom is well-ventilated? Sufficiently lighted?
Spacious enough for the students? Building site sanitary? Building free from health threats? And the school building
has safety features?

5) Processing the monitoring checklists and generating results:

The information from the checklists will be consolidated and analyzed to determine if the school building
constructed efficiently in terms of cost, time, quality, quantity and process? The community based monitoring team
will assess the deviation from standards that occurred and will raise the highlighted common concerns. The team
will answer the following questions as summary of their findings:
Was the implementation timely? Why?
Was it value for cost? Why?
Was the quantity enough and did it follow standards?
Is it a quality School building? Why?
Were processes followed? Why or why not?

6) Reporting and Communicating Outcomes and conducting dialogues

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The Community Based Monitoring Team will discuss their findings and provide initial recommendations to
the contractor and to the PED engineer or to their representatives if they are not around. The Team will
provide weekly monitoring report to ADRO provincial coordinator. These findings and recommendations are
transmitted in formal communications to the implementing agency and to the contractor. The following two
mechanisms will be used to disseminate the results of teams’ findings:

a. Problem solving sessions with contractor

This session will be arranged on weekly basis at project site in which the Provincial education department
engineer and contractor representative will attend the meeting. The monitoring team will communicate the
results of their findings and Identify the solutions together with the stakeholders and the
Decision makers. The main objective of this session is to share the results of project, especially the emerging
issues from the monitors, and looking at how to address these issues together.

Corrections and other recommendations agreed upon are followed up in subsequent meetings and project
visits. A copy of these corrections and other recommendations are furnished to the Provincial Monitoring
Board.

a. Community Feedback Meeting

It’s an event that community monitors provide their activity feedback to their relevant community. This event
conducting once per month in a project by their community monitors.

7) Local Advocacy
Unresolved issues are presented by ADRO to the provincial monitoring board. This board is established in
each province by Afghanistan Development Rehabilitation Organization. It is composed of government
officials from line ministries, the provincial governor’s office, Provincial Council members, donors,
contractors, and community representatives. After getting information from ADRO, PMB visits the project and
ask the company/ contractors to resolve the problems.

8) Establishment of Provincial Monitoring Boards

ADRO will establish the Provincial Monitoring Boards (PMB) in targeted provinces. The PMB is a forum of all
involved stakeholders in the construction projects that consist of members from provincial governor’s office,
provincial council, line-departments, chaired by Head of the Provincial education director and facilitated by
ADRO. Roles of the PMB are to hold infrastructure project implementers accountable, help communities to
solve the detected problems in the infrastructure projects, and assess the projects quality regularly.
Provincial Monitoring Boards meet on monthly and ad-hoc basis, the meeting is arranged by ADRO where
local monitors who have detected problems are also present to share the problems, in all cases the
implementers of infrastructure projects in which problems were detected were also invited to the meeting to
convince them in resolving the detected problems. Provincial Monitoring Board members also conduct field
visits to the problematic projects, and they have the authority to stop the projects until the problems are
resolved by implementing Construction Company.

9) National Advocacy
Issues that cannot be solved at the provincial level are taken to the national level by ADRO Advocacy and
Communication department. These issues might include access to information at a national level by
advocating for legislation change. When there are specific project issues, ADRO works with the infrastructure
service department of the ministry of education in Kabul to get a response to local concerns.

It is Expected that the Community based monitoring program will increase vigilance by the community from
school construction projects of the deterred corrupt practices and will expose a number of anomalies in EQRA
projects which is geared to effectively contribute in the decrease if not totally eradication of the incidence of
corruption in construction projects. Eventually, the delivery of basic services to the intended beneficiaries
will be improved.

7.1 List of the Activities According to the Stated Objectives:

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Objective #1: Monitoring of 70 school construction projects, through community based monitoring
program in Nangarhar, Balkh and Herat provinces, in order to improve the quality, timeliness and
value for money

Activities:

1) Entering into memorandum of understanding with provincial education directorate for

conducting community based monitoring program of school construction projects
2) Selecting Communities in consultation with Provincial Education Directorate: The recently
awarded EQRA school construction projects which is located in remote areas will be selected with
preference given to girl’s schools
3) Electing Community Monitors and Forming community based monitoring team:
4) Collecting Information: The Required documents such as drawing, BoQ, Contracts will be received
from Provincial education directorate
5) Monitoring the construction work: The Community Based Monitoring team will visit the project three
times a week extensively use the checklist specifically designed for monitoring of construction
projects in pre-construction, construction, post construction and conduciveness to learning stages.
6) Reporting and Communicating Outcomes and conducting dialogues through Problem solving
sessions with contractor and Community Feedback Meeting.
7) Local advocacy for rectifying unresolved issues in provincial monitoring boards
8) National advocacy to resolve the pending issues at national level with infrastructure service
department of the ministry of education

Objective #2: Establishing provincial monitoring boards in Nangarhar, Balkh and Herat provinces
to promote constructive engagement with provincial education department and citizens in
performance monitoring and hold the implementing agency accountable for taking corrective
actions against identified deviations, thereby enhancing transparency, accountability and sense of
ownership among the community beneficiaries.

Activities:

1. Establishment of Provincial Monitoring Boards:

The PMB is a forum of all involved stakeholders in the construction projects that consist of members from
provincial governor’s office, provincial council, line-departments, chaired by Head of the Provincial education
director and facilitated by ADRO. Roles of the PMB are to hold infrastructure project implementers
accountable, help communities to solve the detected problems in the infrastructure projects, and assess the
projects quality regularly

2. Field visits of the members of provincial monitoring board:

Provincial Monitoring Board members also conduct field visits to the problematic projects, and they have the
authority to stop the projects until the problems are resolved by implementing Construction Company

Objective #3: Building the capacity of local monitors to undertake construction monitoring in four
important aspects of school buildings namely in preconstruction, construction, post construction
and conduciveness to learning, using easy-to –use community base monitoring manual and
checklists.

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Activities:

1) Capacity building of community based monitoring team:

The community based monitoring team will receive technical and social accountability training from ADRO
staff through a briefing orientation for one week which will be divided in the following four sessions:

Session 1: Social Training:

Session 2: Training on using the Community based monitoring Manual and Checklist in school building
monitoring.
Session 3: Training on Construction Monitoring:
Session 4: planning workshop.

8. Expected Results: (List the expected results and impacts of your proposed activities in the short-term
and long-term.) (not to exceed 5,000 characters)

1. The Program will promote accountability through establishing an effective monitoring

system by which citizens can monitor the construction projects, report the corruption and
hold the implementing agencies accountable for taking corrective actions for the identified
deviations from project plans. It is expected that 70 school construction projects will be
monitored by community monitoring team throughout project life cycle to ensure the
implementation is as per the scope of work, improved quality, as per schedule without
delays and approved budget without cost increase, thereby improving access to quality
education and Promoting local ownership and cultural diversity.

2. The program will establish provincial monitoring board in Nangrahr, Balkh, and Herat
provinces to help communities effectively participate with governance, obtain access to
information on infrastructure projects, account for government Services, solve the detected
problems in the infrastructure projects and assess the projects quality regularly and
systematically, thereby reduce the gap between the state, aid actors and the civil society.

3. The program will enhance technical capacity of local monitors and provincial education
director engineers on social and technical aspect of construction projects using easy -to -
use monitoring checklists with measurable performance indicators and to hold relevant
implementing authorities accountable for the exposed anomalies in EQRA school
construction projects through providing recommendations/feedback for resolving
flaws/deviations in project implementation

4. The program will mobilize communities, empower them, and educate them so that they can
hold public institutions and aid implementers accountable by promoting the ownership
among the community beneficiaries

9. Gender Mainstreaming:

ADRO is committed to promoting gender equality in its own workforce. Integrating gender
considerations into technical programs and achieving equality between women and men in staffing are
complementary policies.

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According to this ADRO Gender Policy Gender Mainstreaming becomes a cross-cutting theme in all
ADRO policies, procedures, and programs which are complemented by specific programs for the
promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment as standalone issues. This means that in
addition to the incorporation of both men’s and women’s perspectives, concerns and voices into every
policy, procedure, and project of ADRO there should be also a focus on separate programs and projects to
address the current gender disparities, and strategic gender needs of women and girls in the country.

The proposed community based monitoring program will contribute to increase gender equality in school
planning, construction and management. During the community election process, the community base
monitoring team will comprise of both men and women and they will be benefited equally, in order to
address the manifestation of gender inequality.

During the monitoring of school construction projects, the community base monitoring team will assess if
the project has negative effect on gender equality and if the project contributes to tension or even violence
in households or at community levels? If yes, this will be brought to the attention of implementing agency
and provincial education directorate to address the issues and ensure gender perspectives.

The community monitoring team will assess if both women and men have participated in the projects and
whether both women and men have benefited from the school construction project. All the collected data
will be gender disaggregated and a gender analysis for the school construction project will be conducted
which includes answering to the following questions

1. Did the school building project objectives have the gender perspectives?
2. Did the school building project activities have gender perspective?
3. Does the school building project address the root causes of the gender inequality?

10. Sustainability: (Describe how your activities and your expected results will persist over time, especially
after your project is completed.) (not to exceed 2,000 characters)

Sustainability is at the center of this project by deploying experts and establishing community monitoring
mechanisms it is obvious that the project will have lasting impact on school buildings administration
work beyond life of the project. The Local Afghan people will learn and realize that all the infrastructures
are built for them and will be utilized by them and if they do not take part from the very beginning to
monitor the quality of the construction and the accountability of the contractors then the

infrastructures-life will be short and the communities will not be benefit from them anymore.

As the ministry of education realize and discover the full potential and positive impact of community
based monitoring on timeliness and quality performance of construction projects , The Infrastructure
service department of the ministry of education will scale up the program along with other donors,
national NGOs and training institution who contribute in school construction through investment on
community capacity building program using the learning gains and developed tools under this program.

The design, implementation and monitoring of all future school construction program across the county
will include community based monitoring as an essential element in MoE program design to ensure
timeliness and quality of the buildings.

The use by government agencies of information technologies that have the ability to transform relations
with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. These technologies can serve a variety of

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different ends: better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and
citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management. The
resulting benefits can be less corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, and/or cost
reductions.

SECTION III. EXPERIENCE AND CAPACITY

1. List the proposed staff who will implement this project.

1. Mr. Najibullah Waziri works as ADRO director. He holds a M.D degree from Kabul University and
has 15 years of experience in project and program management and development, communication and
donor liaising with local NGOs.

2. Mr.Wafiullah works as Program Manager with ADRO and Holds MSC Civil engineering degree from
Cracow university of Technology. He has 12 years of industrial work expertise in the field of civil
engineering specially construction management, engineering monitoring, survey and design of civil
engineering structures. He is familiar with community based monitoring program with World Bank
funded projects

3. Engineer Faisal Amin works as Deputy Program Manager for ADRO. He has a M.sc in infrastructure
planning, university, Stuttgart Germany. He has over 8 years’ experience of implementing similar
interventions of More than 30 Projects for U.S-government contractors in Afghanistan.

4. Mr. Ahmad Farid Sultani works as deputy director with ADRO and holds a B.A degree in English
literature from Kabul University. Mr. Sultani has 14 years of experience with national and international
organizations in project and program management and development, fundraising, communication and
donor liaising, institutional capacity development, training, research, report and proposal writing as well
as works as editorial board member for BBC educational radio programs.

5. Ms. Aqida Rohani works as admin manager with ADRO and is currently completing her final year of
Medical faculty. She has 5 years of experience with local NGOs on administrative issues, human resource
management, training, communication, event management and procurement.

6. Ms. Sarah Cottereau works as a remote communication adviser with ADRO. She has 10 years of
experience working for International Organizations and NGOs in development countries on project
management, proposal development and grant writing, communication and monitoring and evaluation.
She worked in Afghanistan for several years managing a large education consortium.

7. Mr. Najeebullah Tahmas works as finance manager with ADRO. He has a B.B.A degree from Dunya
University and about 11 years of experience with national and international organizations in financial
management, project and program management and development, fund raising, communication and donor
liaising, capacity development, training, research, report and proposal writing as well as monitoring and
evaluation.

8. Mr. Muhammad Amin works as cook/guard with ADRO. He has a baccalaureate degree with 5 years of
experience as security guard.

2. Indicate whether you intend to partner with other organizations to conduct this activity. If so,
please list them. (not to exceed 1,000 characters)

No, ADRO will directly implement this project.

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3. Demonstrate how the existing or proposed team is capable or has the past experience to
implement the proposed activity and achieve the desired results. (not to exceed 3,000 characters)

Afghanistan Development Rehabilitation Organization has implemented similar activities in the

past mentioned above. Our staff is experienced in execution of similar interventions. Beside this
ADRO will appoint local human recourses in relation of the project objectives.

By affixing my signature below, I certify that to the best of my knowledge, the information provided
in this application is accurate and correct – USAID/AMANAT grants team is authorized to verify the
information and conduct reference check:

Submitted by (name and title): _Dr.Najibullah Waziri______________________

June 13, 2020

Signature: _____________________________________ Date: __________________________

FOR USAID/AMANAT PROJECT USE ONLY

Date received _______________ APS Reference No.19.004

The undersigned hereby certifies that: (a) the prospective grantee has received an official
delivery receipt for its Grant Application vial official grants email, (b) confirmation email is
communicated, (c) a reference number (GA) has been assigned
Grants Manager_____________________ Date ________________

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