Large parts of the areas where SRSP works have little access to public services because of the long geographical distances, thin spread of population and difficulties of setting up systems to address needs by public service delivery providers in such areas. It is for this reason that community infrastructure development is an important part of the work SRSP does with the communities. SRSP does not see infrastructure development as a brick and mortar building process. It views it as a process of building community cohesiveness by bringing the community together to address common goals.

By community infrastructure development we mean those infrastructure projects which are identified by the communities, designed with their active involvement, implemented, monitored and sustained by  them. SRSP has experience of working in a vast  and diversified sector in this field. The largest components have been drinking water projects ( dug wells, gravity pull projects, and water pumps) village roads and bridges; sanitation projects; irrigation projects; protective works and mini dams. During disasters SRSP has gained invaluable experience of community driven housing programmes and shelter construction.  In recent years renewable energy has become a big part of SRSP engineering  portfolio with setting up of micro hydro electricity units across the mountainous parts of the province.

Once the projects are designed and cost estimates prepared based on market rates, terms of partnership are developed for working with the communities. The communities establish implementation, audit, accounting and monitoring bodies which provide oversight for the projects and also contribute towards the building costs.  All payment on projects are made directly to the community organizations through cross cheques delivered in open public meeting where the entire costs and expenses on a project are laid before the community.  Many of the  projects have been evaluated rigorously to determine their cost benefits, social returns and economic benefits.

SRSP has experienced teams of Engineers who provide technical guidance and supervision for these projects and a good MIS system which maintains a record of them. For Details on SRSP CPI Activities please visit the Statistics section which contains the updated figures.