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 became successfully when

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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 Assessment Name & Position: Dr.Shah Mahmood
and Training District 2014 April - Email: Shah.M@asi-east.com
Government October
Tel:
Relief International in Campaigns for Community Name& Position: Mohuiddeen Sadrey, Program
Afghanistan Awareness on Sustainable Manager
Agriculture September
2016- February Email: M.sadrey@ri.org
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: 35000 # Female:35000 #

(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 then
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 exist 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.

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

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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 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

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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.

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

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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:

1) 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.

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

2) 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.

3) 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:

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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:

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.

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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.

4) 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.

5) Monitoring the construction work

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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.

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 asses 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 confirm 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

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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 deliver 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
have safety features?

6) 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?

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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?

7) Reporting and Communicating Outcomes and conducting dialogues

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 mechanism 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.

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 8) 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.

9) 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.

10) 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:

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:

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 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 girls 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.

Activities:

1) Capacity building of community based monitoring team:

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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 session:

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:

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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.

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.

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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
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 lead construction engineer with ADRO and Holds MSC Civil engineering
degree from Cracow university of Technology. He has 12 years of industrial work experice 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. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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)

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No, ADRO will directly implement this project.

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 refence 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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