The Bihar Rural Livelihood Promotion Society is led by its General Body, from which a more functional Executive Committee has been formed for taking all policy level decisions and advising the functionaries of the society on the management of the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project. Representatives from the Government of Bihar, civil society, private sector, banks, academia, and developmental institutions will form the executive committee of the Society. The salient features of the organization structure for implementation of the Bihar Rural Livelihoods project is as follows.

The salient features of the organization structure for implementation of the Bihar Rural Livelihoods project is as follows.

Project Structure at State Level

At the state level, the State Project Management Unit (SPMU) has been formed and staffed with a team of dedicated development professionals from the market. The Society will be headed by a Chief Executive Officer who will also be the Project Director of JEEViKA Project. Along with CEO, various functional specialists will be there as State Project Managers and Project Managers, to oversee and manage the various functions within the Jeevika project. The CEO will be assisted by an Officer on Special Duty (a senior employee of planning department of GoB) to foster linkages between the project and Government of Bihar. The allocation of roles and responsibilities of this State Project Team will follow a matrix structure where they will be responsible for a function (specialized and thematic) and a district during project implementation.

The structure of the organization is based on a model where the core functions within the project of mobilization of communities into SHGs, VOs and Federations will be implemented in house and certain other functions which will emerge or in which there is already domain experience within Bihar, the project will use an outsourcing partnership model.

Three organizational innovations will be sought in future for management of the project at the state level, keeping in view the institutional dimension of implementing a project in Bihar, which has low institutional capacity.

First, a Training and Capacity Building Cell is being formed which will look after the large scale staff and community level training needs in a multi functional manner. At a later phase this cell may be spun off as an independent organization to look after the training needs of the state for rural development professionals.

Second, a Business Facilitation Cell is being formed to promote livelihoods through various kinds of partnerships that would allow for sector based technical assistance, marketing tie ups, and sub-sectoral based turnkey partnerships for specific commodities and products. The cell would continuously endeavor to introduce innovations in livelihoods into the project.

Third, a Partnership Cell is being formed which look at partnering civil society institutions who will be stakeholders in specific field locations. The cell will promote partnership and assist such NGOs in their capacity building with a package of services for upgrading their SHG and Federation group quality.

The financial function of the society and project will be managed by a full time Chief Finance Officer, who will be responsible for the both the fiduciary governance of the project funds as well as introduction of best business processes to ensure timeliness of funds flow to the field based community organizations. He will be assisted by a full time Finance Officer deputed by GoB, a Procurement Specialist and an experienced and reputed Financial Management and Technical Support Consultant (FMTSC).

The State Project Management Unit will proactively work for designing policy, planning intervention and frame operational strategies for the project.

Project Structure at District Level

There will be six district units of the Society established as District Project Coordination Unit (DPCU). These units will be operational at district headquarters in Gaya, Madhubani, Nalanda, Muzaffarpur, Purnea and Khagaria. A District Project Coordinator (DPC) will be appointed by the Society to head each of the district unit. To support DPC, Functional Specialists will be placed as per the requirement of the project. To begin with, a District Training Coordinator (DTC) will be functional at DPCU to meet all capacity building requirement of staff working at block level. To assist the DTC, District Training Officers (DTO) will be deputed.

The DPMU will be responsible for coordinating, implementing and managing project activities across the blocks under project operation and in the district. Initially, the DPCU will be a lean and flexible structure, as the pattern of programme expansion in specific themes and specific districts will be dependent on a variety of factors. Initially it is proposed that at the district level District Coordinator along with DTC and DTO will be posted and greater attention will be given to institution building at the block and village level. Depending on progress horizontally across villages and emerging livelihood according to thematic areas, other functional specialist will be introduced into the district team.

Project Structure at Block Level

At block level, society will position a Block Project Implementation Unit (BPIU). This is a key unit of the project. Quality of this unit will determine how effectively the project rolls out in the field. Altogether 42 (total no of block in all six project districts) such units will be created during the project period. This will correspond to the block coverage plan spread into phases. The Block Project Manager will be the functional head of this unit. S/he will be supported by Area Coordinators, Community Coordinator and a minimum number of Finance and Administrative staff. Primarily this unit of the society will work as a mirror functional unit to the proposed Community Organization to be built up over the project period. Hence one of major functions of BPMU will be to facilitate the formation and functioning of Block Level Federation. The block unit will facilitate a graduation process of community representatives who over time take over completely the functions of the BPIU.