The Fuatilia Maji is a pilot action research project aiming to contribute to improving water services in the Mvomero district. The project sets out to involve all relevant stakeholders in the process and contribute to community service learning.
As a first step, the project mapped the needs and problems related to water services and to what extent there was potential contribution from a project on mobile (community) monitoring of water services according to the stakeholders.
The proposed project and the data to be collected as well as which villages to work in, was also discussed with duty bearers on several policy levels.
In a next step, interested citizens were invited to volunteer to be trained as a community monitor.
A first seminar also invited all duty bearers from the villages where the project is operational, to be informed about the project and to be trained in how to access and interpret the collected data.
Once all the data about the water sources is collected and analysed, this information is shared with the citizens by posting a flag (green, orange, red) next to the water source and in the prevention talk meeting. The latter is a meeting open to all citizens of the village, where the results of the tests are explained by means of a poster. The poster visualises information about the water sources as well as the possible effects of contaminated water on health and different methods for treating water. Duty bearers receive a text message with the link to the online portal with all results as well as the poster/ hard copy results.
