In the war-devastated community of Drvar, a new sense of optimism arrived in February, along with the birth of Bozana Damjanovic’s healthy baby boy. The first baby born in the newly reconstructed Drvar Birthing Center, he measured 51 centimeters (20 inches) and weighed in at 3,300 grams (7.3 lbs).

Destroyed along with a third of the town’s buildings during the 1992–1995 war, and left without reconstruction funding, the Birthing Center remained closed for 11 years. Local women were forced to travel 100 kilometers to Livno, the nearest town with appropriate medical facilities. “It is too expensive to travel all the way to Livno, Bozana Damjanovic explained. “It is hard to start this trip on time for the delivery. I heard the last baby was born in a car, and I would not like this to have happened to me.”

Fortunately, thanks in large part to the DAI-implemented Governance Accountability Project(GAP), Bozana and her husband did not have to make the trip to Livno.

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), GAP works to monitor, evaluate, and enhance local services and related programs through frameworks of good governance. 

Beginning in summer 2004, the three-year project quickly helped to create a Community Development Planning Committee in Drvar to encourage citizen involvement in municipal and community affairs. Through a participatory decision-making process, the Committee decided that Drvar’s highest priority was the Birthing Center. 

With GAP’s contributions of technical assistance and $40,000, reconstruction of the Birthing Center was completed in 2006. The Center’s four employees have already helped deliver 14 healthy children.

“We have completed one project with GAP, and that is the reconstruction and equipping of the Birthing Center,” said Dr. Knezevic, the Birthing Center’s director. “But we have started another—and a very noble one: delivering babies and starting life in our community.”

In the 1990s, Bozana Damjanovic and her husband were among more than 17,000 local residents who fled Drvar. Since returning in 1998, the couple has found few job opportunities and money is tight, so they were delighted to save the time and expense of the trip to Livno. Bozana said, “Any money that we can save would be better spent on our baby supplies.” 

As communities across Bosnia and Herzegovina look to promote stability and re-introduce services—the Damjanovics’ war-damaged home was only recently hooked up to the electric system, for example—GAP’s work in Drvar will be a strong example of the potential inherent in the community and the tangible progress that can be made when effective and participatory governance is brought to bear on social problems.