Description

We joined CVA a few months ago in March 2015. CVA means Citizen Voice and Action. It an advocacy approach that helps community members/ service users to be able to use their voices to act in order to improve their services.
We are Kisakye Ritah and Chrispin Mutehimbwa of Kampala from two Divisions of Makindye and Nakawa. We have 42 CVA members, 21 from Makindye division and 21 from Nakawa Division with 15 female and 27 males.
We came to know about CVA in March 2015 when we were contacted by Uganda Youth Network (UYONET) to come and attend CVA training by World Vision. UYONET is one of the implementing partners of World Vision Uganda under a project called UPLIFT which deals with youth civic transformation and livelihood fortification in Kampala.
In May 2015, we were called for refresher training in CVA by World Vision which qualified us to become CVA facilitators. Immediately after the training, we held a community gathering at Kisugu Health Centre III in Makindye Division, Kampala. It was about improving service delivery at the health centre.
Among the most pressing issues sighted by the community members was the issue of non- functionality of the management committee of the health centre. It was in place but non operational to oversee its activities.
Therefore it was upon the CVA team to conduct follow-ups and find out why it was not performing its duties. In June 2015, we did a follow up and discovered that all the committee members were not performing their duties for different reasons like no funding while others didn’t have time among other reasons, and yet the biggest role of the committee is to oversee the operations of the Health Centre against the set standards. However after several dialogue meetings with the Health Centre, the management committee was re-elected and operationalized. According to the team, this was a great achievement.

As written by Rita Kisakye and Chrispin Mutehimbwa