The HDI-IV Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP) and the Community Development for Remote Townships Project (CDRT) both follow an integrated multi-sectoral community development approach. The ICDP operates in 11 townships in southern Shan state, the dry zone, and the Ayeyarwaddy delta, while the CDRT project operates in the border states of Rakhine, Chin and Kachin. There is a strong emphasis on the use of participatory methodologies for social learning and building the social capital of local communities. The project aims to enhance the capacity of the poor through self-help groups and community organisations to help improve their social as well as economic status. Strong emphasis is given to training programs (vocational, skills based, social and educational programs that raise awareness and empower) and linking the community organisations and self-help groups to local support networks. The technical sectors covered by the project include the following:

Primary Health Care
The project stresses the benefits of helping people to prevent illnesses, and to deal with it if disease does strike. The Self-care training programme educates villagers on family planning and HIV/AIDS, the use of contraceptives, and on how to prevent malnutrition as well as common diseases. The project provides training, equipment and supplies of essential drugs to communities, and trains volunteer health workers. Activities aim at raising awareness of communities to understand the causes of, and to prevent priority health problems such as Malaria, HIV/AID, and diarrheal disorders. Project activities aim also at educating local people on the importance of safe water and sanitation.

Community Water Supply and Sanitation
Dysentery, diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases kill many people in Myanmar each year, and make many others ill. Many villages get their water from open wells, unprotected springs, rivers or ponds-often some distance from the village, and usually contaminated.

Latrines are still uncommon in many rural areas, and knowledge of basic hygiene and sanitation is scant. Many people do not make a link between poor water quality and diseases such as diarhoea and other water-borne diseases.

The project helps communities get a reliable supply of safe drinking water-by upgrading existing water-supply systems, or by building new ones. Training of artisans - pump-mechanics, construction workers - is another element of project activities. These trainees can then provide services to their own and other villages into the future.

The project supports the construction of latrines in schools and by individual families, and has designed latrines for use in problem locations, such as waterlogged areas. It helps people to make pans using local materials such as bamboo and to construct their own latrines. Community groups and schoolchildren are trained in the use of latrines and on the importance of clean water and clean hands in preventing diseases. Local social institutions such as monasteries, schools, parent-teacher associations, and youth and women's groups are enlisted to spread messages about the link between good hygiene and health.

Primary Education
The project seeks to improve learning conditions by helping poor communities to construct or renovate school buildings. The project also helps communities to develop alternative learning opportunities through non-formal primary education activities such as the establishment of community learning centres. The project seeks to reduce costs involved in sending children to school through initiatives such as supporting Parent-Teacher Association through income generating activies to assist poor families, and subsidise school fees and other direct costs. In addition, training in environmental education and vocational skills is also provided by the project.

Environment/Food Security
Many families are landless and survive mainly as seasonal agricultural labourers. Credit is expensive or hard to get: many families do not qualify for the formal credit programme because they have no collateral, and are forced to borrow through informal channels at exorbitant interest rates.

The project focuses on helping small-scale farmers and landless people to grow more food and improve incomes from agriculture, livestock and forestry. Activities emphasise ways of using land that are both profitable and sustainable in the long term. The project stresses the importance of environmental protection and environmentally sustainable activities.

Activities focus on land-based development, and ways to enhance local people's incomes through agriculture, forestry and livestock production. Training in appropriate methods and small amounts of credit are provided to help villagers get started. To improve crop yields, project activities promote the design of technical packages that include improved varieties of local seed, fertiliser and other agricultural inputs.

Forestry-related project activities support the establishment of self-help village tree-nurseries (growing a range of multipurpose and fruit-tree species) and the establishment of community forests.

Efforts to improve livestock production include supplying improved breeds of pigs, chickens and ducks, and setting up feed mills where sufficient raw materials are available locally. The project also provides training in veterinary services and techniques for animal management and care.

There is great potential especially for freshwater fish culture; most of the local fishing industry currently relies on brackish and saltwater capture techniques. The project promotes the manufacture and supply of nets, traps and other fishing gear. It develops backyard hatcheries for fish fingerlings, and promotes aquaculture for fish and freshwater prawns. It teaches landless people and smallholders how to grow crabs, shellfish and fin-fish in cages or pens, and supports efforts to set up small-scale plants to produce fish feed and to process fish for sale.