Chukua Hatua (Take Action) Programme

Chukua Hatua operates in six districts across Shinyanga region, a dry, agro-pastoralist area which is one of the economically poorest in Tanzania, and Ngorongoro district in Arusha region, another pastoralist region prone to drought. Underpinning the programme is the belief that if people demand their rights and entitlements, then the government will be increasingly compelled to respond. In the first phase the programme piloted five approaches:

• Election promises tracking: This involved the training of "trackers" in 36 communities prior to the 2010 elections. They made recordings of rally promises and took these back to their communities to agree priorities. They then followed up progress against the leaders’ promises, recording their findings using cartoon notice boards to communicate progress.
• Farmer animators: This involved the orientation of more than 200 farmers nominated by their farmers' groups of approximately 30 people, to understand principles of accountability, how to strategise to hold those in power to account, and how to share their knowledge and facilitate their groups to take action.
• Active musicians: This involved the training of 42 musicians from existing groups on principles of accountability to act as 'seeds' in their groups to influence their music, which is widely listened to by communities.
• Student councils: This involved activating an existing space to sensitise students and teachers on issues of democracy to enable students to campaign for leadership and to hold elections; linking students with community 'champions' to help them raise issues with teachers and school management committees.
• Community radio: This involves creating a new space in Ngorongoro district to enable pastoralists to share information and debate. (as of this writing the government had not yet granted the radio licence).

Following the pilot phase, the approaches were reviewed and shared through the policy document, Citizens Wake Up: The Chukua Hatua (Take Action) Programme in Tanzania [PDF]. According to Oxfam, four of the five pilots demonstrated citizen action, and were able to elicit some response from those in power. Actions range from demanding (and in many cases achieving) that unresponsive doctors, teachers, and village government officials are replaced, to taking steps to secure land threatened by outside investors backed by the government, or gaining compensation from mining companies that have taken community land.
An "active leaders" project was designed part-way through the first phase of the programme. In August 2011, training was carried out for councillors in two districts in Shinyanga, which included the basics on their roles and responsibilities and how to prepare and assess budgets and plans, together with practical work on gathering communities' views, and presenting these to the district management team to agree an action plan. The project plans to develop this approach in phase two of the programme, expanding it to elected village leaders. Mechanisms of highlighting positive and negative behaviour will also be explored, for example working with the media to report on both wrongful arrests and positive government responses.

Governance

According to Oxfam, the second phase of the project builds on the successes of the farmer animators and extends this approach to religious groups and leaders, since faith forms such an integral part of people's lives. The plan for the second phase for the election tracking work was to subsume this within the animator approach, and broaden it to enable animators to look at engaging with budgeting and other village plans. The farmer animators' pilot showed that wider awareness raising was possible, but this now needs to be made concrete. To this end, the active musicians' approach will also be adopted with other arts groups, such as theatre. The gender component will be strengthened by supporting emerging women leaders and working on men’s attitudes towards women.