Displaced persons know too well the frustration of not being able to fully access the services they are entitled to; whether quality healthcare or functioning water and sanitation infrastructure. Ensuring equitable and sufficient access to basic services is key to ensuring displaced persons can live healthy lives in dignity and have a chance at a better future, despite having had to leave their home behind. Our goal is to provide displaced communities with practical ways of tackling these problems and actually getting results, in collaboration with the institutions that serve them.
We do this with an approach inspired by the world of
commercial feedback like TripAdvisor
for why shouldn't displaced persons have
the same power to post reviews of the services they are getting and seek
improvements when the quality is well below what it should be? Explore the tool
here: https://integrityaction.org/devcheck/
We help people to monitor and improve the delivery of vital services like health and WASH. Working with partners, we do this in places where securing improvements to services is tough. And yet these community monitors get results.
Our solution is currently being used by community monitors in 9 countries including Afghanistan, DR Congo and Palestine. Since the app was launched in 2013, monitors have identified some 6,000 problems to date and about 50% of the issues found have been fixed. This might be a water well that was installed but has fallen into disrepair, or a home that was supposed to be rebuilt following the 2015 earthquake in Nepal but where construction was delayed and materials were not good quality. Monitors work with local authorities, NGOs, donors, contractors and without pointing the finger, facilitate discussions around solutions that mean affected communities get access to the services they have the right to.
One of our current priorities is adapting and scaling up our approach in humanitarian and displacement contexts. Funding from Mohammed bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity would enable us to adapt our approach so that we can enable vulnerable displaced populations to engage with duty bearers and key stakeholders in their community to demand access to healthcare and WASH infrastructure.
Founded in 2003, Integrity Action is a non-profit organisation based in the UK working on accountability in humanitarian and development contexts using civic tech. Read more about our organisation: https://integrityaction.org/
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