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COPASAH South Asia Sharing and Documenting
Information Communication Technologies (ICT’s) 

Experiences Workshop

Employing ICTs for Social Accountability in Health

Date: July 2 – 4, 2015                                                                                                                         Venue –Hotel Savshanti, Vadodra (Gujarat) India

No of Participants:
30
                                                           
                                               Co-organised by COPASAH, SAHAJ & CHSJ 

Context:

Community of Practitioners on Accountability and Social Action in Health (COPASAH) is a global community platform of practitioners in the field of health and human rights.  The community uses tools of community monitoring for accountability and health rights. COPASAH has pursued the mission of nurturing, strengthening and promoting collective knowledge, skills and capacity of community-oriented organisations and health activists working in the field of accountability and social action in health, for promoting active citizenship to make health systems responsive, equitable and people-centered.

Goal of the Workshop

As a follow up of a three day COPASAH South Asia -Innovative Use of ICTs for Community Based Monitoring (CBM) in Health, held in January, 2015 in Bhopal, in the state of Madhya Pradesh (India) to facilitate grass root community practitioners to strengthen CBM work by using technology, a three day workshop is being held in Vadodra Gujarat from July 2-4, 2015. Nearly 30 community practitioners from six states of India will participate in the workshop which aims

·         To document  the processes and learnings of using ICT for social accountability in health

·         To build new skills and perspectives of using ICT for CBM

·         To explore  collective efforts as a community of practitioners to effectively use ICT for social accountability and to build learning solidarity

Capacity building of 30 community level health accountability practitioners from six different states of Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh was done using accessible technology like cameras in cellphones, basic cameras on how to take videos, photographs, make photostories and record voices for identifying gaps in health care services and generate evidence for advocacy of health rights in the Bhopal workshop, in January 2015. Subsequent to the Bhopal workshop the practitioners developed an action plan to generate evidence using accessible technology in 18 districts on selected themes of women’s health and those of marginalised communities for accessing free health services and health rights of manual scavengers.

Photo documented evidence on gaps and situation in the health facilities and services were collated,  reviewed and shortlisted  in collaboration with community members and were used for advocating with concerned health officials and committees related to grievance redresses through public health dialogues at various levels of health system. The collated visual report cards were effective in generating awareness in the community with low literacy. The community strategically used evidence to communicate with providers at various levels of health system. It led to building greater visibility of issues related to maternal and child health through social media/ press releases and women and marginalized community members demanding quality health care services. Some of the photodocuments can be   accessed at http://www.copasah.net/uploads/1/2/6/4/12642634/innovative_use_of_ict_in_community_based_monitoring_practice_in_india.pdf

The three day Vadodra workshop aims to collate the experiences of the practitioners in using ICT for social accountability in health, facilitate skill building of practitioners.  It aims to follow a Participatory methodology. The value addition aimed through this three day workshop would be capacity building of practitioners with specific skill of film making technology to document evidences for accountability and social mobilization and an ICT.  

The workshop proposes to follow a schedule aiming to move from sharing experiences to skill enhancement of practitioners 

July 2, 2015 -Day 1: Presentations and sharing on the ICT processes

·         Purpose: detailed documentation of processes of the experiment

·         Each State: one hour (half an hour presentation and half an hour discussion)

July 3, 2015- Day 2:  Film Making –Skill building workshop (Resource Person: Vijay Kumar, film maker and trainer)

·         Purpose: To equip practitioners with  basic skills  of film making (conceputalisation to editing)

·         Methodology: Workshop and group work

July 4, 2015 Day 3:  Learning from Experiences of others

·         Inputs from Video volunteers: Perspectives and experiences of  video volunteers around maternal health  (two hours) – this is under exploration

·         Discussion:  Developing a module for using ICT in CBM  for practitioners

·         Building learning solidarity – Exploring ways to take this learning forward

Outputs

·         Exchange of experiences, report/ case studies (how the process was done, challenges met and  overcome )  on using technology for community monitoring

·         Sharing of experience of the AV  product e.g. video story, photo story, audio-story  by each group

·         Module for using ICT in CBM for practitioners