The CUCEC was engaged in a study of “Impact of Humanitarian Aid and Conflict”. This was being carried out in collaboration with the Oxfam America. This study was being executed in 5 districts in the country. The main objective of this research study was to study the conflicts related to aid distribution in Relief, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (RRR) work for the people affected by the tsunami, war and poverty in Sri Lanka and to recommend conflict perceptive programs for the aid delivery agencies. The study provided a useful conceptualization as how humanitarian aid activities need to be carried out when more than one district is considered. This study attempted to develop very useful indicators in order to understand the impact of tsunami, war and poverty in a comparative perspective. The study categorizes the selected study areas in to four groups in order to generalize the findings such as: Poverty stricken areas, Poverty stricken and tsunami-affected areas, Poverty stricken, tsunami-affected and war-affected areas, Poverty stricken and war-affected areas. The CUCEC implemented this project in partnership with other universities, namely University of Jaffna, Eastern University and South-eastern University. This collaboration served also as an in-built capacity-building mechanism, where the CUCEC trained and transfer expertise to faculty and research staff in the regional universities. The final report was submitted to the Oxfam on time.

The CUCEC was engaged in a study of “People’s Consultations on Post-tsunami RRR in Sri Lanka”. This was being carried out in collaboration with the Disaster Relief Monitoring Unit of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka and the United Nations Development Programme. This study was being executed in 1142 tsunami-affected villages in 13 districts in Sri Lanka. The main focus of this study was to bring people into a process in such a way that at one level it involves consulting them in a meaningful and effective way, and at another level it involves informing the relevant authorities of the needs of the ground. This project was a response to the findings of the needs assessment carried out by the multilateral agencies, in which the lack of people’s participation was highlighted as a significant gap in the post-tsunami recovery process. The CUCEC implemented this project in partnership with other universities, namely University of Jaffna, Eastern University, South-eastern University and University of Ruhuna. This collaboration served also as an in-built capacity-building mechanism, where the CUCEC trained and transfer expertise to faculty and research staff in the regional universities. The final report was submitted to the UNDP on time and available for reference.

The objective of this plan was to prepare a user-friendly implementable five-year development plan for the North-western Province. The plan has identified the relevant sectors of the North-western Province and drawn up detailed sectoral plans. The information was gathered from various sources both at local as well as district/provincial/national level. Although sectoral plans were presented separately for the identified sectors, sectoral integration also was done in order to increase the efficacy of the plan and presented a comprehensive regional development strategy. One of the salient features of the plan is the presentation of the projects with their potential and specific locations. In addition, development strategies are also presented to enhance the implementability. The most interesting and also the most important outcome of the plan is the proposal on establishing Focal development Centres which have never been incorporated in any development in this country either at regional or national level. This provides a unique opportunity to develop the province simultaneously through identified strategic locations. When this plan was presented in the North-western Provincial Council, it was highly commended and approved by both ruling and opposition parties of the North-western Provincial Council. This plan has been approved by the Finance Commission of the Treasury and all the funds are being given to the province according to the annual activity plan presented.

This project attempted to make distinction between university academics and others who are involved in community development process since academics are capable in conceptualising such processes so one can easily replicate the successes in similar contexts. This seems very important as we hither to have failed in employing various strategies of rural development without adhering to proper conceptual base. For this, many examples can be drawn through the experiences of Integrated Rural Development Projects, which were commenced in the early 1980s and ran through even to the subsequent decade. It was with some failures of the IRDP programmes the University of Colombo was given the task of to explore an improved method of participatory rural development. This project was implemented from 1998 to 2003 in collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). This project proposed an improved method of participatory rural development, which has been named as “multi-level participatory methodology”. It appears this methodology has many advantages over other methods and strategies participatory rural development since this has proved and guaranteed the sustainability of rural development work. With this experience, the project went on further developing a system of University-Community Extension, which has the potential of changing the traditional functions of the university system in this country.

This project produced policy implications arising out of the MONDEP Research Project carried out by the University of Colombo during the period 2001-2004 with financial assistance from the Royal Norwegian Government that funded the Moneragala Integrated Rural Development Project implemented by the Government of Sri Lanka from 1984 through 2004. The MONDEP Research Project also addressed the issues of regional development in general. With the ‘Policy Briefs”, it was decided to get feedback from the stakeholders before the research findings and recommendations are presented to the policy makers. The Policy Briefs were set out of the individual research studies and from the point of view of the researchers. Furthermore, the research programme was based on dialogue research method – one that recognizes potential for effecting improvements whilst research is being carried out.

This project was undertaken on the invitation of the Rural Economy Resuscitation Fund of the Ministry of Rural Economy in latter part of the year 2003. As few other wholesale markets were going to be commissioned during the period 2002-2204, it appeared that it was essential to review the experience of the Dambulla as well as Meegoda wholesale markets. In this context, the following were investigated in this study: i. Study and review the market operation and practices identifying the hidden areas in the wholesale markets; ii. Examine the informal market practices in both demand and supply perspectives; iii. Examine the chain of activities from rural producer to whole seller including the pricing and determining the ways and means to increase the rural producer’s share of the price; iv. Make recommendations to streamline the activities and compile lessons for other markets to follow.

This project was designed to delve deeper into the extent which the Social Mobilization programme in Moneragala district has achieved its major objectives such as:1. Mobilzation of the poor; 2. Group formation and organization building; 3. Credit delivery mechanism; 4. Savings; and 5. Alleviation of poverty. A combination of methods such as personal observations, questionnaires, interviews, and discussions/mini-workshops with social mibilizers, social mobilizer groups, officials responsible for implementation of the social mobilizer groups, official responsible for implementation of the programmes and other officials both at district and national level who are familiar with participatory poverty alleviation programmes were adopted in order to collect relevant information.

This project focused upon the prevailing state of i. Information and communication technology capacity; and ii. Human rights sensitivity and awareness in Moneragala district. This study made recommendations as to how these could be improved and mechanisms for their improvement. In addition, it was made to produce a training manual/tool kit in order to be used to improve capacity of the different stake-holders in the area. This project included field visits and deskwork. A combination of methods such as personal observation, questionnaires and interviews were employed to garner information on existing state of affairs and attitudes & perceptions of stakeholders.

The following areas are being investigated in this project: 1. Political economy of aid; 2. Capacity of sub-national institutions to manage aid; 3. Role of civil society organizations; 4. How do local communities respond to aid? The project focuses on the sub-national levels of governance. Batticaloa and Kalutara districts have been selected for investigation. This study is being carried out in collaboration with Norwegian Institute of Urban and Regional Research (NIBR). The methodology builds on the concept of Formative Dialogue Research, which has been developed by NIBR. The project will collect a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. These databases will be upgraded at regular intervals. A mixture of tools will be employed for different areas of investigation such as surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus-group discussions and documents.

This project was mainly based on a field survey conducted to explore the potentials for community based sustainable tourism promotion in Moneragala district. This district s considered as the poorest district in Sri Lanka although it has abundant untapped resources to develop a number of key economic activities including tourism to accelerate the economic growth and development in the district. This project examined the tourism potential and then proposed strategies to promote the tourism industry with the community participation in sustainable manner.

This bibliography covers three types of literature: i. Reports and academic literature concerning IRDPs and regional and local development approaches in Sri Lanka from 1990s to 2002; ii. Reports and academic literature concerning approaches to private sector development and employment creation in Sri Lanka; iii. Types of quantitative data existing with HIRDEP and Hambantota in general. The information for this bibliography was obtained mainly from two sources: i. Regional Development Division of the Western Province Development Ministry (formerly under the Ministry of Plan Implementation) and ii. HIRDEP Office in Hambantota district. In addition, various other sources such as libraries, academics and Institute of Policy Studies were consulted for obtaining relevant literature. A short annotated bibliography was also prepared for certain selected reports and literature by considering their importance.