Citizens’ Voice in Action model transforms school

Several years ago, World Vision Eswatini introduced an advocacy model, known as Citizens’ Voice in Action (CVA), which is aimed at empowering and encouraging communities to demand good service delivery and participate in community development. Ekukhanyeni Primary School is one of the schools that was trained on CVA by World Vision.

“Through the CVA model, the school now has a guard house which was built by the parents, after raising money amongst themselves. The two security guards now have shelter and they proudly provide safety to the learners. The parents also mobilized funds and reroofed two classrooms that had leaking roofs,” Jabulile Ngwenya, the Head Mistress of the school, said.

According to the Head Mistress, the school had no financial muscle to construct the guard house or reroof the classes. The money received from government is just enough for the administration of the school. For capital projects, the school, in partnership with the school committee, seek financial assistance somewhere else.

Currently, the school is orienting the new school committee on CVA, so that they are also empowered to transform the school. The school has an enrollment of 478 pupils and 17 teachers.

Ekukhanyeni Primary School is one of the many schools at Ekukhanyeni Area Programme (AP) that was trained on CVA.

Bongiwe Dlamini, the Development Facilitator for the AP, said they were proud of this school for continually implementing CVA unmonitored.

This school, over the years, has benefited a lot from World Vision, including a borehole that is supplying the school with clean water. This water is used by the school, teachers’ quarters and the school garden.

“We consider World Vision as a key partner in this school. We have access to clean water as we speak and, all year round, we never lack water. As a result, we are active in Agriculture and our pupils are doing well,” Jabulile elaborated.

She added that, during the peak of COVID-19, the school also received support from World Vision in the form of sanitizers, soaps, face masks educational chats, handwashing facilities and much more.

She further highlighted that the school had old toilets for both boys and girls, which were very smelly. It was very difficult to conduct lessons because of the horrible smell, which also attracted flies. They tried to use detergents to minimize it, but nothing happened. As such, they were very grateful when World Vision constructed toilets for the school, thus improving the children and teachers’ health and wellbeing.