15.1 Formation of MACRO Teams

CSOs that attended the workshop formed a macro team which will have the responsibility of monitoring poverty and PRSP at national (MACRO) level. The following criteria was used to elect the team. Five (5) members were elected from the five (05) zones as catecogorised according to the Local Government Reform Programme phase I. The zones are Coast comprising of Dar es Salaam and Coast regions, Lake Zone, comprising of Mwanza, Kagera, Shinyanga regions; Northern Zone, comprising of Arusha, Kilimanjaro regions, Central Zone, comprising of Dodoma and Singida regions and Southern Zone, which comprises Mbeya, Iringa, and Rukwa regions. The five CSOs from other zones joined the group of five CSOs which were appointed by the TCDD Secretariat based on their comparative advantage of doing work of this nature. These include the Hakikazi catalyst from Arusha, Tanzania Council on Social Development (TACOSODE) of Dar es Salaam, Maarifa ni Ufunguo/TEN/MET from Kilimanjaro, the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation of Dar es Salaam and Women Research and Documentation Project (WRDP) from Dar es Salaam. WRDP has vast experience in undertaking research, also most of its members are academicians endowed with analytical skills, Haki Kazi Catalyst's Director was among the first people to take the initiatives of mobilizing CSO to unite their efforts towards debt, poverty and PRSP, also currently they are trying to translate PRSP into a language which can be understood by average Tanzanians and make it user friendly, the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation was founded by the former President of Tanzania, The Late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who was a strong advocate of debt cancellation and poverty reduction. TACOSODE has been in the forefront of TCDDs work since its inception. Maarifa, under TEN/MET have vast experience in lobbying and advocacy in the education sector. They have researched extensively in the area of education. Haki Kazi Catalyst was proposed to be the chair of the Macro Team. The participants endorsed the proposal unanimously. Save the Children Fund (International), Oxfam GB and Concern Worldwide were also proposed to be Resource Organisation that will backstop the Macro Team with required capacity as appropriate.

The Macro term from the Zones comprises of:-

KENNAPA - Northen Zone (Kiteto) District are:

Kisarawe Intermediary Gender Network (IGN) - Coastal Zone (Kisarawe District)

Samaritan - Kasulu Organistion (SEKO)- Lake Zone (Kasulu District)

Tanzania Home Economics Assocation (TAHEA) - Southern Zone (Mbeya Municipal District)

Union of Non-Governmental Organization (UNGO) - Central Zone (Mpwapwa District)

The Macro team will be meeting quarterly, or from time to time as need arises. This team is independent from the four (04) groups of the Government led Poverty Monitoring System. It will be meeting separately as a CSO Technical Working Group.

15.2 Strategies to monitor the PRSP at District level.

Each CSO from the 38 districts involved in phase I of the Local Government Reform Programme who attended the workshop was charged with the responsibility of spearheading the formation of district monitoring teams in their respective districts.
The following procedures was agreed as the guideline on how this monitoring will be carried out at the District level.

When participants arrive back to their duty stations, they have to inform their organizations about what transpired at the Dar es Salaam workshop and agree on how to carry the process forward as an organization. After this the second step is for this CSO to call the meeting of other CSOs in the district, and inform/provide feedback to them on the whole initiative of civil society participation in monitoring poverty and the PRSP. In that meeting, CSOs will have an opportunity to discuss district PRSP monitoring strategies and form CSOs monitoring teams which will be elected by the district CSO network. Also elected will be the Chair, Secretary and Treasurer of the monitoring teams, which are to come from different CSOs with a comparative advantage of performing those functions.

After forming district monitoring team(s), each team will introduce itself to district authorities. The team will introduce its mission and objective of monitoring poverty and PRSP at district level. This introduction mission can be done in number of ways, depending on the specific context. The team can pay a visit to the authorities, write an introduction letter, produce a press release etc. CSOs can also publish their PRSP monitoring objectives and disseminate them through newspapers and newsletters.

Before district monitoring team(s) embark on anything, a brief training on how poverty monitoring will be done has to be conducted. The main facilitator of this training has to be the person who attended this workshop. During that training, among other things, they will select a PRSP priority sectors that will be monitored in a particular District, i.e. basic health, rural water supply, rural roads, primary education, agricultural extension, good governance (corruption), HIV/AIDS. It was highly recommended the maximum number of sectors to be monitored in one year should be two (02).

Monitoring implementation: when the training is through, the monitoring process will start by visiting the responsible District Council Officer (civil servants) of a particular chosen PRSP monitoring sector in order to review policy documents including district sector plans and budgets. The team has to review them as well as financial reports (both budget and expenditure reports, audit, evaluation reports, etc.). The team will then share the relevant policy document with each other and familiarise themselves on what the policy says in respect to how services are supposed to be provided in a particular sector.

The next step, after reviewing policy documents is to conduct focus group interviews with users and providers, to determine the intensity of poverty at the district level or a particular priority sector intervention that is under review from the way the people themselves see it. This exercise has the objective of understanding poverty as experienced by the poor and taking on board their proposal on how to reduce it. These interventions have to be conducted around the sector(s) that has been chosen by a particular district to be the entry-point for monitoring the PRSP. Before conducting the focus group interviews the monitoring team has to determine what method(s) they will use, taking into account costs, time, capacity and resources. Next step is to develop interviews guidelines. Thereafter, sampling follows; considering both the place of the study and target groups. Having done the above, the interviews will be conducted. These interviews will be done at ward and district level with decision making committees, service provision facilities, staff employed to provide services, users, non-users, ordinary people, youth, women, men groups, etc. Immediately after finishing field activities, the findings of the monitoring activities will be analysed/synthesized and the data that comes-out will be documented in a report, which has to be in simple language for easy understanding by an average person and applied by policy makers. One component of the report must be recommendations which are implementable given the available resources.

Having equipped itself with accurate and reliable information, the team will convene a seminar with the full District Council and other key stakeholders. These include religious, traditional leaders and other opinion makers such as retired politicians and leaders of the business community. The result of the monitoring work done by CSOs will be put forward and their recommendations which will help to curb the situation. CSOs will then challenge the full Council to recommend steps and policy decisions that should be taken to mitigate harmful effects of policy, budget gaps.

Once the pro-poor interventions/recommendations have been discussed by the full council and recommendations have been issued, the task that remains is for CSOs to monitor how District Civil Servants act on these recommendations (as directed by the district leadership). An alliance may be built with the Chairperson of the District Council and Members of Parliament in the follow-up activities. The chairperson of the Council can be proposed to be chair of a joint CSO/District Council Follow-up Monitoring Committee. CSOs will then ensure that these pro-poor areas/issues are incorporated in the District budget for the following year. CSOs may ask to sit in the Budget Select Committees of the District Council as observers, so as to monitor pro-poor funding in district budgets.

Once this has been successfully done then the monitoring process can move into monitoring another sector.

Meanwhile, the District Monitoring Team will synthesize their findings and forward it to the macro-team for sysnthesing at the national level. Here under is the proposed implementation matrix:

Macro Monitoring Team;

Although not extensively debated at the workshop, the work plan for the macro-group is proposed to be as follows: