Community-based monitoring

Community-based monitoring (CBM) is a form of public oversight, ideally driven by local information needs and community values, to increase the accountability and quality of social services such as health,[1] development aid,[2] or to contribute to the management of natural resources.[3] Within the CBM framework, members of a community affected by a social program or environmental change track this change and its local impacts, and generate demands, suggestions, critiques and data that they then act on, including by feeding back to the organization implementing the program or managing the environmental change. For a Toolkit on Community-Based Monitoring methodology with a focus on community oversight of infrastructure projects, see www.communitymonitoring.org (Available in English and Dari/Farsi).[4] For a library of resources relating to community-based monitoring of tropical forests, see forestcompass.org/how/resources.[5]

CBM aims not only to generate the appropriate information for high quality service delivery but also seeks to strengthen local decision-making, public education, community capacity and effective public participation in local government.[6] Ultimately, CBM is a tool to facilitate more inclusive decision-making on issues that are important to members of a community, including increasingly complex aspects of social, economic and environmental factors.[7]

CBM has primarily been used in the disciplines of health and natural resource management.

  1. ^ Poverty Action Lab, Community-based monitoring of primary health care providers in Uganda http://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/community-based-monitoring-primary-healthcare-providers-uganda
  2. ^ Gupta, Huma, Haris Jahangeer & Mateja Zupancic "Community-Based Monitoring Toolkit." Integrity Watch Afghanistan. June 2013 http://www.communitymonitoring.org
  3. ^ Forest Compass, 2015, http://forestcompass.org/
  4. ^ Gupta, Huma, Haris Jahangeer & Mateja Zupancic "Community-Based Monitoring Toolkit." Integrity Watch Afghanistan. June 2013 http://www.communitymonitoring.org
  5. ^ Forest Compass, 2015, http://forestcompass.org/
  6. ^ The Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network Coordinating Office and the Canadian Nature Federation. (2003). Improving Local Decision-Making through Community Based Monitoring: Toward a Canadian Community Monitoring Network. http://www.ccmn.ca/english/library/ccmn.pdf
  7. ^ The Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network Coordinating Office and the Canadian Nature Federation. (2003). Improving Local Decision-Making through Community Based Monitoring: Toward a Canadian Community Monitoring Network. http://www.ccmn.ca/english/library/ccmn.pdf