Hope for the urban poor: DFID city community challenge (C3) fund pilot in Kampala and Jinja, Uganda

This paper describes a new pilot fund to support community initiatives for urban poor groups in Uganda's two largest cities, Kampala and Jinja. Suppor ted by the UK Government's Department for International Development, it is called the C3 fund since it is city-based, set up to support community-init iated proposals and includes a focus on capacity building. The approach is unusual in that external aid is supporting a local fund to which community group can apply and where decisions about the projects that receive funds a re bring taken locally. The paper first describes the decentralization prog ramme ill Uganda and the changes that have encouraged NGOs and foreign dono rs to work with local authorities. It then describes the C3 fund's design, how it has been set up, and its operational mechanisms and financial and ma nagerial procedures.