The Comoros Social Fund's Projectobjective is to support demand driven initiatives developedby communities and in so doing create employment and improveaccess to basic services. The project became effective onAugust 5, 1998. Barely ten days later, the deterioratingcountry situation led to a suspension of disbursements. TheGovernment basically disengaged from any development relatedactivities and the constant reshuffling of Ministers inComoros permitted very little dialogue on education, healthor social protection issues. The project was designed tohave Comorian rural communities as its key interlocutor.Communities in Comoros are strong, dynamic, and theircohesiveness results in a short and medium-term vision as towhat type of development activities are priorities for theirrespective communities (school rehabilitation, water, feederroad rehabilitation, etc.) and a willingness to invest timeand money (mainly from remittances from family membersabroad) to achieve their development goals. The project wassupervised in 3 phases: (i) suspension of disbursements(August 1998 March 2000); (ii) project start-up after thesuspension was lifted (March 200-March 2001); and (iii)"normalization" (April 2001-present). A quality ofsupervision of risk projects was conducted by theBank's Quality Assurance Group ( QAG ) in October 2001.The overall assessment was that this was an exemplarysupervision effort, adapting to difficult and changing conditions.