The Black Sash Community Monitoring and Advocacy Project (CMAP), conducted in partnership with the Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT) as funded by the European Union, ran from 2009 to 2013 and was implemented by civil society organisations based within communities, in a bid to improve government service delivery to poor and marginalised communities and individuals.
Over the project period, 479 individuals nominated from 404 different civil society organisations, drawn from all 9 provinces in South Africa, participated at different levels in the CMAP. In an intensive programme of support, they participated in a total of 36 provincial workshops and received a total of 606 field visits.
Monitors submitted more than 8 965 questionnaires that were developed into 41 reports on service delivery. Black Sash and our partners documented the project and distributed examples of good practice, together with our reflections.
The work of CMAP and its methodology was shared with government and civil society, at conferences, in publications, and with the media, in an attempt to create a better understanding of service delivery challenges across different sectors. We also used the opportunities to present lessons learned from CMAP for community-driven methodologies, in order to address these challenges.
The Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE), conducted an independent evaluation and found that three main significant changes could be attributed to the CMAP:
- Improved awareness of rights and active citizenship
- Improvement in service delivery
- Strengthened stakeholder relationships/
