COPSA: Maximising benefits of SA September 18, 2012 Om Prakash Arya CUTS, India

2.63 billion do not have access to improved sanitation facilities 1.7 billion people lack access to clean water 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity. 925 million people do not have enough to eat 22,000 children die each day due to conditions of poverty 80 percent of south Asians survives below two dollar a day World’s Population: 6.8 billion

What do you say not reaching to them Food? Water? Medicine Sanitation? Electricity? Employment? The Secret… If not completely, mostly the knowledge is not reaching Or Information & Knowledge?

Arranging the marriage of ideas … If I have a rupee and you have a rupee and we exchange, we both will be left with a rupee but if both of us have an idea each, by the exchange of it, both of us will be left with 2 ideas. And if we let the ideas get married and have children without using any family planning methods, we can’t imagine the number of ideas we will have.

1.Connect people across countries to share information and opportunities 2.Encourage innovation and the sharing of practical experience 3.Inspire collaboration between countries 4.Help development practitioners get results out of their knowledge exchange 5.Facilitate new methods of capacity development 6.Develop resources for others who want to development differently We are putting efforts to …

To contribute towards the development goal of improved lives through ensuring accountability and Transparency. To put efforts towards removing the major constraints limiting people/ institutions in achievement of this goal To improve expenditure outcomes of public money Why are we putting efforts to …

How… Nurture and consolidate sharing of knowledge Facilitate networking, innovation and co- creation of new knowledge Facilitate mainstreaming social accountability and integrate it into country/region specific work

The Steps covered … Finalization of a core group Country consultation Inception and Design meet for COPSA Online platform for engagement The Road ahead… Promoting Innovation Capacity building of members Sensitization of funding agencies/ Government The road …

Initial building blocks… The growing base of community The traffic on the CoPSA web portal (Accountability Solutions) is increasing 216 practitioners of social accountability in south Asia getting regular updates Total 107 weekly reach on the facebook page of Accountability Solutions People have started taking part in discussion forums, writing blogs etc.

Expect from the existing community to motivate people to join CoPSA Create, collect and share stories, cases, tools, documents, digital stories etc. Put your efforts to strengthen the network Engage community to ensure accountability and transparency by innovative tools Sensitize donor organizations about social accountability approaches and demand fund for such work Expectations…

Thank You