Social funds

Social Funds provide a mechanism via which funds for community-identified development initiatives can be directly funded and rapidly disbursed by government. Beneficiary communities are expected to play a central role in identifying priority areas for intervention (usually in the health, education or water supply and sanitation sectors), managing funds and project implementation, and in sustaining the interventions in the long-term. In general, Social Funds have successfully distributed resources to communities that are either un-reached or under-served by the government or private sectors.

Some Funds, such as those in Honduras and Bolivia, have demonstrated positive health impacts, such as significantly increased utilisation of fund-supported health centres. The Honduras Social Fund has also been successful in reaching the very poor, although many other schemes have not been able to achieve this. Having found that the poorest groups lacked the capacity to mobilise and access funds during its first phase of operations, the Malawi Social Action Fund is using civil society organisations as a mechanism for reaching the very poor in its second phase. Malawi Social Action Fund provides a useful overview of the challenges associated with scaling up operations institutionally, economically and physically.

The World Bank website provides further information on Social Funds: www.worldbank.org/socialfunds