Friends Of Christ Revival Ministries (FOC-REV)

Context

Friends of Christ –Revival Ministries (FOC-REV) is an indigenous non-governmental, non-profit, non-political charitable Community Based Christian Organisation that was established in 1999 by a group of volunteers arising out of the crisis that has been caused by HIV/AIDS and poverty in the rural communities in Uganda Uganda. They are involved in following activities:
  • Conduct sensitisation meetings for community structures (HUMC, VHT’s) to enable them take active roles in the project activities
  • Hold orientation meetings; at sub county targeting community representatives, health workers and sub county leaders on major health policies
  • Conducting training workshops in at sub counties for community representatives (HUMC, VHT coordinators, Parish chiefs and LC leaders) on parish, Sub County and district planning and budgeting processes.
  • Conduct evidence-based advocacy meetings at district level targeting stakeholders in at district level.
  • Develop summary DPP’s and district Budgets and feedback to community through quarterly feedback meetings and Radio talk shows.
  • Target advocacy groups and line ministries and departments (health and finance) to share advocacy issues related to transparency and accountability at the district and community levels.
  • Together with partners conduct dialogue meetings at each Health Centre and Sub County to discuss findings of the citizen report card.
  • Facilitate a health worker dialogue meeting at each health Centre to discuss and understand the citizen report Cards
  • Facilitate a community dialogue meeting with the community members to discuss and understand the citizen report Cards at health facility level
  • Conduct joint interface meetings at health facility level to develop joint action plans and community based learning networks for follow up action.
  • Together with partners and community based learning networks conduct quarterly follow-up dialogue meetings.
  • Collect, document and share Most Significant Change (MSC) stories.
  • Conduct Outcome Mapping (OM) as a rigorous monitoring approach and document expect to see, like to see, and love to see progress marker.
  • Conduct community awareness sessions through quarterly radio talk shows on health rights, action plans, transparency and accountability.
Website
www.focrevministries.org
Area of Work
Africa
Contact Person
John Francis Oketcho

Approaches to implementing Community monitoring/ accountability

  • Baseline study and Citizen Report Cards: these are used to establish the situation on the ground before relevant interventions are put in place. They especially try to get the views of communities and make use of both primary and secondary data at health centres in determining what reference points or landmarks should be noted.
  • Community-based Dialogue and Action Planning: after the situation on the ground is established, then we get on with the process of support the interface among stakeholders through discussions, debate and dialogue especially at the community level. Here community concerns and priorities are established, as community members (rights holders) interact and discuss with health workers, leaders and members of community based structures (VHTs and HUMCs). From such discussions and resultant Action Plans, community priorities are taken on board in planning and budgeting processes at the sub-county and district levels.
  • Program Implementation: the action plans developed at community level in a participatory manner, are then implemented through community-based structures focusing on ensuring that there is transparency and accountability as well as demand for improved health service delivery.
  • Follow-up and “Light-touch” Monitoring: the participation of the community in this continues even in the follow-up of project implementation, with “light-touch” monitoring where FOC-REV and partners work as catalysts to the monitoring of program implementation (minimal interference as possible), allowing the communities to play their roles as key stakeholders in tracking accountability and transparency and demanding for improved health service delivery as a right.

Results and Lessons

  1. Improved health seeking behavior
  2. Improved working relationship between clients and health worker
  3. Improved regularity of health workers on duty
  4. Increased information about the available services
  5. Strengthened community accountability mechanisms to advocate for improved community services
  6. Empowered communities able to demand for quality services
  7. Increased community participation in budgeting and planning
Lessons learnt
  1. From our past implementation we have learnt that the use of citizen Report Cards in accountability projects strengthens community participation and involvement in advocating for better health through accountability and transparency