CERC’s first project: Integrity Clubs in secondary schools in Uvira and Bukavu, where students trained in community monitoring got their schools’ classrooms, toilets and water fixed.
Translated from the original French edition.
Students who know how to monitor their school’s services, hold it to account and get problems fixed.
students trained in 54 Integrity Clubs in South Kivu, 2017–2020
average fix rate of the problems students reported, 2017–2020
monitors trained in the first year, 152 of them girls
received from Integrity Action, 2017–2020; every period audited
SHINE set out to promote transparency and social accountability in education by mobilising students to monitor the services of their secondary schools.
Students Acting for Honesty, Integrity and Equality (SHINE) was CERC’s first project; CERC was founded in April 2017. It was funded by NORAD and Sida through Integrity Action, which also provided its Community Integrity Building method, its Integrity Clubs guide and the DevelopmentCheck monitoring tool. Project years ran from October to September: year 1 from 1 October 2017 to 30 September 2018, year 2 from 1 October 2018 to 30 September 2019, then a third phase to the end of 2020.
In the DRC, free education is a constitutional right, but the education system is still largely funded by parents. Schools lack equipment, sanitation, running water and teaching materials, and staff are underpaid, often irregularly. For CERC, this lack of transparency and poor service delivery stem above all from a missing culture of integrity.
SHINE combined integrity education, in Integrity Clubs at school, with community monitoring on the ground using information technology. Trained in anti-corruption, citizenship, transparency and accountability, inclusion and gender equality and leadership, students used DevelopmentCheck to monitor their school’s services – class sizes, toilets, water, library, teachers’ attendance and qualifications, budgets and spending – and infrastructure projects in their communities, then looked for solutions with school managers, parents and providers in joint working group meetings.
In December 2017, CERC launched Integrity Clubs in 20 secondary schools in Uvira territory and trained their first trainers.
From 27 November to 1 December 2017, five CERC staff members took Integrity Action’s full Community Integrity Building training in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where they tested the new version of DevelopmentCheck. On Friday 8 December 2017, CERC launched Integrity Club activities in 20 secondary schools in Uvira territory.
Two four-day trainings of trainers followed, from 20 to 23 December 2017 in Uvira town and from 2 to 5 January 2018 in the Ruzizi plain: 20 principals, 40 teachers and 60 club leaders trained – for each school, two teachers, the principal and three club leaders.
300 students – 152 girls and 148 boys – were trained as community monitors. From February 2018 they monitored the infrastructure and education services of 20 secondary schools in Uvira, Kiliba, Sange, Luberizi, Bwegera and Luvungi, worth more than US$1 million: 20 services and 21 infrastructure projects. The clubs received small grants for their monitoring and advocacy, and a weekly radio magazine, “The Integrity Builders”, in Swahili and French on two community radio stations, broadcast their debates. In Bukavu, an integrity exchange workshop brought together 13 people from 6 local organisations and 2 representatives of the Ministry of Education.
At Institut Itara in Luvungi, monitors found students sitting three or four to a desk, 70 to 90 in a classroom built for 50, rain pouring onto them, and only three toilets for 590 students. After their meetings with the school management and stakeholders, new classrooms were built in 2018 and a block of eight latrines, with separate toilets for girls and boys, was started.
“The Integrity Club saved my life.”
Yvette Rosalive Meucca, Integrity Club leader
In 2018, according to CERC’s annual report, 1,780 students in Uvira were able to study in safer conditions thanks to the clubs’ monitoring and advocacy.
The clubs spread from the Ruzizi plain to Bukavu, and students took their demands all the way to the provincial government.
In 2018, 15 new clubs joined the first 20 in Uvira. On 8 and 9 December 2018, International Anti-Corruption Day, CERC mobilised 35 secondary schools in Uvira under the theme “United against corruption for development, peace and security”. In 2019, according to the annual report, 55 Integrity Clubs were operating in secondary schools in Uvira and Bukavu, and CERC had a network of 1,000 young people.
In January and February 2019, school facilitators – educators appointed by principals to guide the clubs – were trained in the anti-corruption legal framework. The clubs held debates, sketches, paintings and short films; at Institut Guido Maria Conforti, members made a painting against corruption at school. Monitors travelled close to 5 km every month between Luberizi and Tengetenge to follow the rehabilitation of an irrigation canal.
In December 2019, 100 club members marched against corruption at provincial level and handed the authorities a memorandum calling on them to act against corruption in education and to rehabilitate and equip schools. In 2020, South Kivu’s education officials agreed that Integrity Clubs be rolled out across the region.
“Thanks to the joint working group meetings held in our school, the whole process has become clearer and more transparent.”
Kahindo Ndjungu, principal of ITIP Uvira
Between 2017 and 2020, CERC trained 810 students in 54 Integrity Clubs in South Kivu. With DevelopmentCheck they monitored 54 infrastructure projects and services in their communities and achieved an average fix rate of 32% of the cases where corruption had caused problems. Over 40% of the monitors trained were girls. Classrooms were built, facilities rehabilitated, toilets built, desks repaired and tiles replaced; by 2020, 13 schools monitored had water in their toilets.
In October 2018, CERC evaluated the first year of the project: relevant, effective and efficient, with “professional and transparent” management – but still too small in scale.
The internal evaluation was carried out by Douce Kanyeba Songolo, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Officer, and Heri Bitamala, then Programme Officer, using adapted World Bank evaluation criteria: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. It draws on the project documents, a field mission from 15 September to 4 October 2018 with students, teachers, principals, community members and providers, and a survey of club members at the start and end of the year.
| Indicator | Target | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Young monitors aged 15 to 19 | 300 | 300, 152 of them girls |
| Young people still active in the clubs at year end | 300 | 277 |
| Girls among club members | 50% | 52% |
| Girls among club leaders | 30% | 48% |
| Members from groups at risk of exclusion | 15% | 4.6% |
| Integrity Clubs | 20 | 20, 19 of them active |
| Young people reached by the clubs | 2,000 | 1,623 |
| Impact measured by the Fix Score | 15% | 43% |
Between the start and the end of the year, club members’ answers changed markedly:
The trainings for teachers and club leaders had a multiplier effect: they in turn trained 240 other club members and more than 1,600 students in other schools.
The project was “unquestionably relevant”, it reached most of its planned results while staying within the budget agreed with Integrity Action, and “project management was professional and transparent”. The evaluation also points to weaknesses: good-quality trainings that could not be repeated, for lack of funds; a still small scale – 20 of the 303 secondary schools in Uvira territory; the inclusion target for young people at risk of exclusion missed; still weak skills in using DevelopmentCheck (only 41% of members said they could at the end of the year); and no explicit exit strategy in the partner schools.
CERC received CDF 93,925,930 from Integrity Action for year 1, CDF 73,202,400 for year 2 and US$31,320.20 for phase 3. The accounts of the first two years were kept in Congolese francs; they are converted into US dollars at the Banque Centrale du Congo’s average rate for the year in which most of each period falls (CDF 1,622.52 per dollar in 2018, CDF 1,647.76 in 2019), as on our financial accountability page. CERC made no contribution of its own.
| Period | Received | Received US$ | Spent US$ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 · Oct 2017 – Sep 2018 | CDF 93,925,930 | 57,888.92 | 56,272.27 |
| Year 2 · Oct 2018 – Sep 2019 | CDF 73,202,400 | 44,425.40 | 44,786.65 |
| Phase 3 · Oct 2019 – Dec 2020 | US$31,320.20 | 30,306.30 | 27,798.84 |
| Total 2017–2020 | 132,620.62 | 128,857.76 |
Phase 3: US$31,320.20 received according to the 2020 audit, of which US$1,013.90 (at the audit’s rate of CDF 2,000 per dollar) is the year 2 balance already counted. Balance at the end of 2020: US$3,521.36, owed to Integrity Action; with the US$241.50 exchange difference, it accounts for the gap between funds received and spent (in francs, the balances chain exactly). The funds of October–December 2019 fall between two audits.
91.65% of the CDF 102,481,500 budget was received. Spending went to staff (CDF 32,520,000), programme activities – trainings, clubs and monitoring, awareness raising and advocacy (CDF 39,991,100) –, rent, running costs and equipment (CDF 6,196,080), professional fees (CDF 3,138,200) and overheads (CDF 9,457,500). The workshop planned in Kinshasa with civil society organisations was held in Bukavu, the December 2017 campaign did not take place and the clubs were supported for only eight months out of twelve. Balance at 30 September 2018: CDF 2,623,050.
With the year 1 balance, the project had CDF 75,825,450. The clubs’ recognition ceremony was postponed to December 2019, as students could not be mobilised during the long holidays. Balance at 30 September 2019: CDF 2,027,803.
In 2020, CERC spent US$27,798.84: salaries (15,605.58), work with schools (4,799.45), training (1,203.05), clubs and monitoring (826.60), advocacy (953.44), professional fees (45.15), communication, printing and supplies (2,227.52) and overheads (2,138.05). At 31 December 2020, the audit records the balance of US$3,521.36 as a debt to Integrity Action.
The accounts were audited by Group BEAG (Uvira), with reports signed by Armand Aluma, chartered accountant, for year 1 (29 October 2018), year 2 (14 October 2019) and the 2020 accounts: each time an unqualified opinion. The auditors recommended surprise cash counts, a better inventory, compliance with purchasing procedures and payment of taxes and social contributions on salaries; CERC began paying them during year 2, and some recommendations were still to be implemented in 2019.
CERC thanks Integrity Action, NORAD and Sida, the principals, teachers, facilitators and parents of the partner schools in Uvira and Bukavu, the education authorities of South Kivu, the community radio stations that broadcast the clubs’ debates, and above all the students of the Integrity Clubs.
Report what you see in your school or health centre. Your feedback helps make education and health services in the DRC better and more transparent.
