This Guide is the third of the series Integrated Rural Access Planning and Community Contracting in water and sanitation. It aims at guiding community contracting processes that are being developed and linking them to integrated rural access planning both in the W&S sector and others. In this context, the purpose of community contracting is to formally define the agreements reached between the Responsible Authority and the Community during the planning process in order to execute public works and manage services.

This Guide has been developed based on the experience of Paraguay in which the planning process resulted in contracting beneficiary communities to execute public works and adopt service management agreements. The achievements of other Community Contracting processes encouraged by the ILO in countries such as Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Madagascar, Mali, Nias, Pakistan, Peru, Somalia and South Africa have also been taken into account.

The ILO hopes that this Guide will effectively contribute to developing the Water and Sanitation sector in dispersed indigenous rural populations in different local and national contexts as well as serving as an example to apply it in other sectors. Consequently, it is expected that the Community Contracting methodology be adapted and updated according to the national and local context in which it will be used and that it be integrated and increasingly applied in sectoral and local government programmes and projects in the context of a Rural Economy.