In Uganda, citizens are taking it upon themselves to fix the
gaps in public service delivery using an interactive approach. At TRAC FM, we
are really excited to see how organizations like RICNET are using the data collected to
inform their advocacy campaigns and most importantly to bring about change in
their communities.
Over the past year, TRAC FM has worked closely with RICNET to collect citizens' opinions on issues of service delivery, transparency and accountability with specific focus on the Rwenzori region.
In November 2012 RICNET wanted to find out “should parents contribute a fee towards provision of lunch to children at schools.”
According to a survey at the time, many children were not getting lunch at school whereas only 25% took packed lunch. The same survey also found that children who don’t take/ get lunch at school cannot learn properly.
RICNET partnered with TRAC FM to benefit from TRAC FM’s versatile platform to run a radio poll.
Question paused over Radio:
The question was broadcast on Life FM; a local radio station situated in heart of Fort Portal. 713 people participated. 86% of the participants agreed that parents should contribute some money to make it possible for their children to get lunch at school.
Details are here: http://www.tracfm.org/p/view/311
ACTION SO FAR TAKEN
“With the above results, we engaged school managements, parents and other CSO to start a campaign for parents supporting feeding pupils in schools. This campaign has been well received and so far 23 schools have taken it for candidate classes of Primary Six and Seven” John Silco the Director RICNET said.
RICNET captured a video of one of the parent, teacher and children meeting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2JI1nAriBw.
We are still building more partnerships.
“Members, can we combine TRAC FM and action research methodology. TRAC FM can validate large samples of data from radio listeners for purposive sampling under action research. This would add more information to our research during the sense making exercise.” John Silco recently wrote on the I-Network mailing list.
Photo by Andy Kristian.
