The local institutions are mentioned separately from authorities because they are more politically independent, acting as service providers and have interests very similar to ours when it comes to community development.

Schools, kindergartens, social and centers and departments, doctors, employment offices, libraries, Fire Brigades, local police units, regional and local representations of various ministries have always played an important role in the community development process. People working in those institutions also suffer from permanent lack of resources, lack of training, often face bureaucracy in their offices and are demotivated by being unable to make things bettter. It has been especially valid for the younger people in those institutions to not see a way for personal improvement and clash of their expectations with the reality. The older ones however, well remember the past when the things were quite different.

So the workers of those institutions have often been among the most active members of the local teams working with the vulnerable communities. Although their own resources are too small, different facilities were often given for free for use by the local PRA/PCD teams. Many micro-projects in PCD have combined donors resources with the ones provided by those institutions.

The knowledge of these people in their respective areas is a valuable source of information which has helped very much in analysing and targeting local needs.
Quite often people who are working in those institutions are at the same time local Red Cross members and volunteers, a fact that helped a lot during the prosess, but also after,  when the local projects are finished.

Of course we have seen institutions, which are not working well. As local democracy works well with motivating authorities to do a better job, the same applies to institutions.

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