Beyond Beijing Committee organised a half day introductory session on the concepts of Community Monitoring and Social Accountability in Kathmandu, Nepal. Rakshya Paudyal, who got opportunities to be a part of the COPASAH workshop held in Mumbai, and second peer learning visit in Tumkur, Karnataka, introduced the concept of Community Based Monitoring and Social Accountability in Nepal. The participants of the session were community based organisations from three different districts of Nepal along with some NGOs based in Kathmandu. There were altogether 19 participants as CBO and NGO representatives.
Objective- To introduce the community practitioners to the concept of community monitoring and social accountability
The session started with the introduction of community monitoring and social accountability in which the participants were asked about their knowledge on this aspect of community monitoring of health. The participants reported that the systematic process of monitoring in the field of health in not applied by any of them and even the concept of community monitoring is new to them. They said that the monitoring (with no systematic documentation) is carried out in the village level regarding utilisation of fund allocated for women. Thus the concept of community monitoring and social accountability was something different and interesting for them.
There were several important subjects that were discussed upon in the session. These included:
- Essential features of community monitoring
- Why is it important in the context of Nepal
- The process of community monitoring
- Tools that can be used for community monitoring
- The impact of community monitoring
During the whole session, the participants were very interactive and delighted to be part of. They said that the concept was new and interesting, yet challenging. The challenges have been mainly with regard to the political situation of the country.
After the presentation and discussion, there was pictorial presentation of the pictures taken in the PHC (Kavadagalli) of Tumkur, Karnataka (visited by the group during the second facilitated learning exchange visit). In this presentation it was described how the community monitoring and advocacy done by Dalit community led to the transformation of PHC and how the doctor in charge of the PHC could make a difference. The participants found this pictorial presentation very effective and found the work in PHC exemplary. Some CBOs even took away the picture so that they can show it as an example in their community. The picture, especially that of listing all the available medicines inside the PHC was very catchy to the participants. They realised that they can start their advocacy even for a small change which could be the listing of freely available medicine in the health facility. After a round of discussions, participants committed that they will start advocating for listing the medicine in the PHC of their community which BBC takes as one of the achievements of the session. The participants were impressed with the idea of community monitoring and they seemed very eager to apply that in their community.
On behalf of BBC,
Rakshya Paudyal
Program Officer
Secretatiat, Beyond Beijing Committee