The government of Magelang city is committed to continuing participatory monitoring and evaluation (M&E) that USAID IUWASH PLUS has officially introduced in its working areas since 2018. The participatory M&E is regarded effective to boost public participation in improving WASH access.
Each cycle of the participatory M&E consists six interrelated steps, namely community team training, monitoring on WASH access and behavior change, community action plan (RKM) evaluation, M&E result analysis, community discussion, and stakeholder meeting. The last step gives the community teams to advocate community meeting to advocate policy makers and other stakeholders to back up the RKM implementation.
To materialize the city government’s commitment, Bappeda of Magelang city supported the community teams from four USAID IUWASH PLUS supported urban villages to conduct the 3rd stakeholder meeting. Those urban villages are Panjang, Tidar Utara, Rejowinangun Utara, and Gelangan. The 3rd stakeholder meeting is a continuation of the first and second stakeholder meetings held in Magelang city on February, 2019 and October, 2019.
The supports from Bappeda included the meeting venue, invitation to all OPDs and private sectors, and advocacy to the Mayor and legislatives to present in the meeting. Yet, such supports did not cover other expenses, such as sound system rent and snacks during the preparation meetings.
Thus, the community teams assisted by USAID IUWASH PLUS had to seek external funding sources by giving more opportunities for other stakeholders to join and participate in the meeting. The teams also created a fundraising campaign and successfully collected Rp7 million from the private sector and government offices.
These efforts show the community’s increasing capacity to implement the participatory M&E cycle. With support from Bappeda and collected funds, the community teams conducted the 3rd stakeholder meeting on March 11, 2020, where the Deputy of Magelang City Mayor, Agustina Windarti was present.
During the stakeholder meeting, the community teams presented 11 RKMs with 37 proposed activities. The majority of these activities are likely to be funded through CSR, microfinance, and contribution from community members. The Deputy Mayor of Magelang City, Windarti Agustina, highly appreciated the community teams for improving WASH access through collaboration with the community members and stakeholders.
One of the key improvements was decreasing the number of households practicing open defecation. Based on the participatory M&E data in early 2020 in USAID IUWASH PLUS’ working areas, the households practicing open defecation decreased from 324 households in 2019 to 272 households while the number of households having toilets with septic tanks increased from 230 households in 2019 to 259 households. Similarly, the piped water connections also increased from 528 households to 538 households.
Seeing this success, the Deputy Mayor hopes that there will be a medium for the community teams to continue their activities and wishes that the participatory M&E will be rolled out in all villages.
“We are committed to providing a medium for the community teams as they will continue USAID IUWASH PLUS’ work at the community level,” said Handini Rahayu, the Head of Magelang City’s Office of Housing and Settlement.
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