Community based monitoring

IWA’s Community Based Monitoring Pillar promotes social accountability through community mobilisation and social audit. The programme works with local communities in four provinces, Balkh, Herat, Nangahar and Parwan, and helps local community members to monitor reconstruction projects to promote aid effectiveness and qualitative construction. Approximately 200 projects will be monitored by local communities towards the end of 2011.

The programme started in 2007 with 10 communities in the district of Jabel Seraj, Parwan province and has expanded across the years due to its success in empowering citizens in taking an active role in promoting integrity and accountability. The methodology implemented is illustrated below:

The above graph can be summarised in the following five steps:

1. Elected communities elect two local monitors who can read and write, volunteer around four hours per week and have a reputation of integrity. These local monitors are then trained on basic engineering and integrity issues by IWA. The communities also select the reconstruction project they want to monitor according to their needs. Based on IWA’s experience, priority one and two tend to be schools and clinics.

2. The local monitors then proceed to gather information and monitor the reconstruction project through regular field visits in which they compare the actual construction output versus project specification.

3. The monitors then provide reports to the community, implementer, local government and IWA on their findings.

4. Depending on the report, IWA might share the report forward to donors and to the general public.

5. Based on the findings, IWA and the local monitors work together with the implementer and sub-national government to assure that the construction is of good quality and sustainable.

All IWA monitors are volunteers in order to assure community ownership and sustainability. Although IWA works through the CDCs to elect the local monitors, it is the entire community, women and youth included, that elect the monitors in order to assure that the entire community can hold the monitors accountable to the process. Furthermore, to guard the integrity of the monitors, they are always chosen in pairs.

Due to the nature of the process, communities select the reconstruction project they feel is most important to them, which results in various implementers, companies, Non-governmental Organisations and donors. For more information, please click here. National Solidarity Program projects are usually discouraged as these have their own community monitoring mechanisms but would nevertheless be supported if the community emphasises on it.

IWA has also created Provincial Monitoring Boards in each of the provinces it operates. These boards are common forums where sub-national government representatives, local monitors, construction companies, provincial development council representatives, donors and media sit together to address construction problems identified by the local monitors. Commitments made during the meetings and field visits are recorded in order to provide the communities an additional tool in holding authorities or companies accountable. These forums create a bridge of dialogue and cooperation between the population and the state.

IWA strongly believes in cooperation and avoidance of duplication. It therefore collaborates quite frequently with aid delivery actors, the government and the population. Although various actors have their own evaluation mechanisms, these tend to be paid by those that have an interest in the success of the project and are short-termed. Although these evaluations are important and provide a professional view, community monitors are direct beneficiaries of the project and have a more needs-based assessment. Moreover, the communities are there for the entire duration of the construction and are better capable to identify irregularities.

The objective of this project is to empower citizens in holding authorities and aid entities accountable and to create active and responsible citizenship by decreasing the gap between state, aid actors and the population. Communities engaged in local monitoring become more autonomous in solving their problems through dialogue and reduce their reliance on alternative power holders.