The Village and Neighborhood Councils (V&NCs) being an elected body at the village unit has been a key citizen engagement and entitlement success in terms of providing basic municipal services, the generation and strengthening of social capital, and inclusion of socially excluded members. These successes are supported by the results obtained from a quantitative rigorous V&NCs study that was undertaken in seven DTCE’s partner districts in Pakistan in October 2009. The approval rating, effectiveness, interaction, and efficacy of V&NCs were much higher than any other political institution and therefore V&NC were characterized as an important institution in the overall service delivery paradigm at local level. The study recommended the expansion of V&NCs in other parts of Pakistan and proposed that this institution should concentrate on street cleaning, streets light, garbage disposal from village, and appointment of village guards up to certain extent while leaving out promotion of CCBs.

DTCE has evolved a revised model for implementation of V&NCs program while adopting a focused approach for institutionalizing municipal Service, public safety and local governance through the institution of V&NC. According to the revised municipal service, public safety and local governance model, all V&NCs in a union council will form two bodies namely (a) Union Public Safety Committee (UPSC) with the objective to improve upon public safety in coordination with the local police and (b) Coordination and Support Committee (C&SC) for overseeing, monitoring and facilitation of the VNCs in its respective Union for the availability of municipal service and governance at local level.