What is Social Audit?

Social Audits are citizen-driven tools, used to engage citizens, community members, or civil society organizations in collecting and publicly sharing information on available resources allocated for service delivery and public works. Steps taken to ensure that the work done on public projects actually benefits the people whom it is intended to benefit.

Who Should Conduct Social Audit? #

Social audit is best done by direct beneficiaries of the project. It should be done by people who are interested in improving the status of the community. Social audit investigates issues of performance, accountability, relationships between stakeholders, impact of the project.

Why Is Social Audit Important? #

• Social audit focuses on citizens as stakeholders. It includes: information disclosure, demystification and dissemination; beneficiary participation and consultation; complaints handling; and independent and/or participatory monitoring
• To enlighten the citizens on the projects/programmes being undertaken in their locality and empower them to demand accountability and transparency in project implementation
• Empower communities to gather and legitimize evidence of their experience of service delivery enabling them to claim their constitutional rights to democratic participation and accountable government
• Build community power, deepening the culture of participatory democracy and public deliberation
• Provides opportunity for vulnerable, marginalised voices to be heard, and a space for people who have been excluded and discriminated against to achieve a measure of justice and to hold government to account.