Description

Du is a village on the island of Flores in Indonesia. CVA activities began in the village of Du in 2011. Through the CVA “social audit” and process, villagers discovered that the catchment population of their village was sufficient to require that a midwife be posted at their local clinic, according to Indonesian law.

The score card process helped villagers prioritize the posting of a midwife over a number of other issues.

Elected village head Yoseph Marianus has been in office for 7 years. In the past he had visited the sub-district to lobby but they had refused his request and he had not felt able to take it further.

As the village head for 7 years he had never visited District headquarters to lobby for services. But after a series of CVA activities, he says that his confidence and knowledge as a public servant has improved. He arranged to meet with the head of the District health section to lobby for a village midwife to be assigned to his village. The head of the sub-district, which had knocked back his requests for a midwife in the past, joined him in the meeting with the District health section. Together, they presented the information gathered during the CVA process.

It wasn’t an immediate success and took some significant rounds of lobbying using national government standards which mandate the allocation of permanent village midwives. Initially, the District would only allocate a midwife 4 days a week, but with community pressure and persistent lobbying they secured a permanent midwife.

Yoseph attributed the success to two key things:

1. Community voice, especially women, where there was silence in the past.
2. His own improved confidence and knowledge to successfully lobby the District for the midwife

Prior to CVA, Yoseph said that community members were generally “silent” in community meetings
“Since CVA started in the village the community have become motivated,” he said. “At first they didn’t have the confidence to speak. (But) the community have more courage to speak up in community meetings. The women also speak. They have more fight (sic).”

“I have more confidence and knowledge to speak at the District and I have the support of the community members and the community health clinic.”

Despite his successful lobbying campaign to secure the midwife, when asked what he thought was the most significant change attributable to CVA he cites the community’s confidence and motivation to speak up in meetings.
CVA has played a significant role in the following examples in Indonesia:

• Permanent allocation of midwives or reduced absenteeism
• Increased access to community health insurance
• Government stepping in to appropriately equip facilities ie supplementary feeding nutrition and drugs (where WV had felt compelled to supply in the past)
• Enforcement of the mandated government informal education package for health clinic cadres
• Improved cadre and community motivation
• Increased government incentives for health clinic cadres
• Greater transparency of school budgets for community knowledge and participation
• Access to village budget funds for services based on community demands
• Increased ability for community members to participate in formal government participatory planning processes known as the ‘musrenbang’ (which are supported by major donors such as AusAID).
• Access to funds through PNPM (AusAID the major donor) for services infrastructure such a community health clinics, roads, electricity, water supply
• Access to available government funding for early childhood development
• Access to training for early child hood teachers
• Village budget increased for supplementary feeding

Importantly, CVA is playing a role in complementing and supporting the work of government and major donors in local governance