Background: Matongo Community is in located about 40 kilometers from Senanga District Administration Offices. Despite having a fairly accessible road network to the school, the area has not been spared from poverty and other inequalities. Economic activity is predominantly fishing and subsistence farming.
In a bid to ensure the realization of the right to education, the area has a primary school. However,
Beneficiary’s story in their own words:
“My name is Imakumba Imakumba, I was privileged to be one of the participants trained by CSPR on social accountability in 2022 and 2023. From the time CSPR started implementing the Voice and Accountability Project in our Community, we have been enlightened on a number of things such as our human rights, School Grants and Social Accountability, and based on the knowledge we received, it has impacted our community positively because we did not know how to engage the school administration and how to access information at community level.
Using the knowledge we acquired through the trainings, I managed to engage the school administration on the best ways we could use in sharing information with the community members and through this engagement, the school Headteacher came up with an initiative to distribute copies of the School Budgets, Expenditure reports and other communication from the school is made through the village headmen, and copies of what is happening in schools are always availed to the community members before the PTC meetings are held. This move has enabled community members including myself to make contributions in these meetings using an informed perspective as we now have enough time to review and interpret the information to the level that every person in our village is able to understand.
Currently the education service delivery in our community is making progress as community members receive information in real time’’
In this regard, the Matongo school administration in partnership with the CSPR Community Champions have enhanced communication and collaboration to ensure that there is improvement in service delivery and operations at the school.
Project Background:
CSPR with support from the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) through the World Bank is implementing the Zambia Voice and Accountability: Community Empowerment for Improved Local Service Delivery Project (V&A Project) in 9 Districts of Eastern and Western provinces. The project aims to enhance community engagement and participation in monitoring the delivery of education services.
