Background and objectives
The Regional Office for Africa and the Arab States of UN-Habitat and the Government of Ghana are preparing a comprehensive support programme to the Government's poverty reduction programme through application of principles of community development and the Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP), lessons learnt through implementation of the Strengthening Community Management Programme (SCMP) and the Accra Sustainable Programme (ASP).  The SCMP and the ASP experience will be replicated and expanded to the rest of the country.  The knowledge base of the two programmes will be used to prepare a proposal with external expertise providing critical analysis of the methodology. 

Activities
It is a three-month programme preparation activity in which an international consultant will work with national experts to identify eight low-income communities to be mobilized and trained for replication of the SCMP and ASP in a larger programme. 

Results
The result of this activity will be a framework to assist the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development in applying the lessons learnt in the implementation of SCMP and ASP. The output will be a set of proposals to support the decentralization process and poverty reduction.