Building Organizational Networks for Good Governance and Advocacy (BONGA)

The programme objectives include:

• developing the institutional capacities of community-based organisations (CSOs) and CSO networks, and providing a strong basis for their advocacy activities;
• strengthening CSO networks and linkages, with a special emphasis on partnerships with local government offices for accountability;
• providing capacity strengthening support to government bodies coordinating non-governmental organisation (NGO) activities;
• improving CSO capacity to implement publicly beneficial services with tangible and constructive service provision plans developed jointly by government; and
• strengthening CSOs’ capacity to work jointly with government to identify public accountability issues that negatively impact service delivery and jointly develop strategies to resolve these issues.

The BONGA programme aims to support different actors, notably parliament and civil society, to work together to increase public participation in political decision-making, holding the government accountable on policy, budgetary, and expenditure issues, and closely monitoring expenditure and service delivery.

Pact provides capacity building and resources to journalists to cover Public Expenditure Tracking (PETS) issues. Its journalist training is both workshop and field-based. A workshop explaining PETS and how PETS issues can be reported is followed up by on-site coaching, facilitating journalists to work on real examples and actually report the stories.

Pact facilitates opportunities to foster peer learning on how the public can be involved in the budgeting and planning process at the local level. In order to share experiences in advocating to the government for policy directions and transparency in the management of public funds, Pact Tanzania organises and convenes semi-annual or annual half-day seminars to present success stories. Stories are published in the media and on the web.

According to the organisers, cross-sectoral issues are an integral part of Pact's approach and methodology. Thus, issues of gender and HIV/AIDS, as well as use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), are integrated throughout the programme across all levels.

Topics for the technical assistance during the first year included:

• organisational change management;
• gender mainstreaming;
• financial management;
• conflict management
• strategic planning;
• leadership and governance;
• use of the media;
• advocacy and lobbying for policy change; and
• public expenditure tracking systems and national budget processes.

Democracy and Governance.

The programme hopes to build on the results of Pact Tanzania's democracy and governance project - the Tanzania Advocacy Partnership Program (TAPP), which concluded in 2005. A baseline assessment was undertaken to determine advocacy issues and the competency of CSOs in basic advocacy. Pact Tanzania developed the BONGA Advocacy Index Tool (BAIT) to determine the advocacy capabilities of its partners and identify appropriate capacity building interventions necessary to improve the effectiveness of the network. The BAIT is used on a regular basis to measure progress, growth, and the effectiveness of the network and citizen group. The Tool measures capacity in six areas of organisational development, namely: governance and management; financial management; sustainability; actual advocacy effectiveness; external relations; and human resources.