MAF Plan for Sustainable Community Development to be presented at Workshop Wednesday

On Wednesday, September 10th there will be a Validation Workshop at the University of St. Martin (USM) to endorse the Millennium Acceleration Framework (MAF) Country Action Plan.

This Validation Workshop aims at helping key players in the Government of Sint Maarten, Line Ministries, Development Partners, Civil Society Organizations and the Private Sector agree to a feasible set of interventions and activities in four specific areas to overcome the constraints to sustainable community development.

This Action Plan aims to help Sint Maarten accelerate the achievements of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 1 (poverty eradication) and MDG 7 (environmental sustainability) by focusing on sustainable community development.

The Action Plan not only addresses accelerating progress on MDG 1 (Poverty) and MDG 7 (Environmental Sustainability), it also touches upon eight of the seventeen proposed Sustainable Development Goals for the MDG post-2015 agenda.

The workshop will help the attendees to focus on those activities which the development partners will have to concentrate on as priorities for next year. This is considered as crucial in order to put MDG 1 and MDG 7 on track for the deadline of 2015. It is of fundamental importance for entering the phase of the post 2015 development agenda.

In conclusion, the validation workshop will lead attendees on endorsing the Country Action Plan, detailing a focused number of high impact measures and specifying a number of major potential partners and stakeholders from the line Ministries, Development Partners, Civil Society Organizations and the Private Sector.

Representatives of some relevant Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), private sector companies, business associations, relevant Department heads, Secretary Generals and Ministers are invited to attend the validation workshop.

In February a Methodological MAF (MDG’s Acceleration Framework) Workshop was held and conducted by the Department of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BAK), of the Ministry of General Affairs in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where several crucial topics on Sustainable Community Development for Sint Maarten were discussed.

Out of this workshop four priority areas were chosen: 1. Neighborhood/District improvement, 2. Provision of Programs for Youth in the community, 3. Alleviation of the Socio-Economic burden of the Elderly, and 4. Conservation of Nature.

Right after the February workshop an Experts Group (EG) was formed. The EG members were selected out of key ministries and seven departments from five line ministries, a United Nations (UN) agency and three NGOs.

This group has met regularly during the past half year to dig deeper into the aforementioned areas, analyzing the bottlenecks, identifying solutions and activities needed. The EG also identified the potential partners in the community to play a role in the execution of the projects when those are designed.

Fostering sustainable community development is a key strategy to promote poverty alleviation and ensure environmental sustainability and accelerate progress on MDG1 and MDG7.