Empowering communities to improve service delivery

Lauren met with Opmo Onono Patrick a secretary

 for VBC Waribu Cing Osi village and a plumber by

 profession who shared with her the works of the VBC

I heard of other VBCs (Village Budget Clubs) in another sub county and the work they were doing, so when Forum for Women in Democracy approached us to start one in our area, to monitor service delivery and hold our leaders accountable, it was like a dream come true.

The major problem in my community was that people didn’t know their rights or about government programs. We did not participate in planning for the community, and we often didn’t see government money that was supposed to help our community. We also had issues with the hospitals; the health workers were not treating people equally or fairly. Some teachers were also abusing their position by having students cook for them. But since we started monitoring the schools, some of these incidences have stopped.

We received training from Forum for Women in Democracy which helped us to understand gender and budgets and also our role in the planning and monitoring processes. This helped people know their rights and they can now monitor the sub county budgets. Last year people did not attend the budgeting and planning meetings, but now we are mobilizing the people so that the numbers of people participating in these meetings increase.

With our monitoring work, the sub county leadership started encouraging parents to send their children to school and parents are progressively more supportive towards their children’s education. The health centers have also improved greatly with lesser incidences of labor and delivery problems being reported. I am most proud of the amount of monitoring we have done. The monitoring has helped us get money back to the community from the government, because now government officials are using it more efficiently.

Our VBC, Waribu Cing Osi has 30 members (16 women and 14 men) these are both young and old, members with disabilities could not join because they feared moving long distances. Through our VBC we have increased participation of women in the community. They express their views, attend and contribute in meetings, and monitor government programs. The teachers in the schools we monitor are more respectful to women, even outside of the meetings, women voice their opinions more.

The work of the VBC has been greatly supported by the community leaders; they come to our meetings when we ask for their help. At the beginning it was difficult to hold the leaders accountable or to work with them, but with time they have become better, they follow through to support us when we have concerns or problems. For example, we previously dealt with a dispute over land designated for a parish hospital. We took the issue to the sub county and they helped to ensure that the hospital land would not be sold to another buyer.

Since the work of the VBC started, we have a sense of unity in our community, and the men are starting to see the women as equals. In future, I would like the VBCs to recruit and train more members to enable us cover the whole district and not just the sub county, if we are to have great impact in this monitoring work.

As told to Lauren Coleman

FOWODE intern