Bukavu, 4–6 June 2018 – For three days, members of civil society organisations from South and North Kivu learned how to plan and run an advocacy campaign to raise awareness of the gaps discovered while monitoring projects and public services – and of the merits of integrity. The Integrity Exchange Workshop was organised by CERC under Students Acting for Honesty, Integrity and Equality (SHINE), a project implemented with Integrity Action and funded by NORAD and Sida.
CERC brought together six civil society organisations and two representatives of the provincial Ministry of Education – 13 participants in all. They analysed the causes of corruption in their communities and received the full Community Integrity Building training, Integrity Action's method that CERC uses in its Integrity Clubs. The programme covered:
- effective integrity building training for civil society organisations;
- monitoring development projects and services, including their impact, with technology such as DevelopmentCheck;
- public participation in developing, implementing and monitoring community projects and services;
- planning and running an advocacy campaign for transparency in the education sector.
The workshop also allowed local organisations to learn from each other, share good practice and exchange ideas and strategies on ways to build integrity and prevent corruption in their communities. It was first planned in Kinshasa and held in Bukavu, since all the participants came from North and South Kivu.
CERC shared its own first months of practice with SHINE. Since December 2017, Integrity Clubs have been running in 20 secondary schools of Uvira territory, and since February 2018, 300 students – 152 girls and 148 boys – trained as community monitors have been following infrastructure and education services worth more than US$1 million: 20 services and 21 infrastructure projects.
At the end of the workshop, the participants formed a local network of Integrity Builders. Its first goal is to advocate for the integrity education manual to be included in the national curriculum, so that every student in the DRC learns about integrity – not only those in schools with a club.
The 13 participants now return to their organisations with a shared method, shared tools and a shared goal: to carry the voice of students and communities to the people who make decisions.
Make a donation to help CERC train more teachers and club leaders, or become a supporter to bring Integrity Clubs to more schools in the DRC.
Read also: CERC and the South Kivu Ministry of Education discuss corruption in schools