Dear Friends and Colleagues,
In our ongoing efforts to communicate about the work of a progressive exit, we are often asked, 'what do you measure to know that you can exit'? We think a key complementary question is: 'how will the institutional actors adopting our programs measure their success'?
In this newsletter:
- example of a partnership to build M&E ownership with government partners
- the cost-efficiency of a transformative leadership training program for local officials
- study on the viability of rural businesses supported under WaterSHED’s market-based sanitation program
Bonus: handwashing.
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What about M&E?
In previous newsletters and blog posts, we’ve talked a lot about facilitating a government-led program at scale. A big part of the story is how the government will track its progress and have the information to adjust course.
At the request of our counterparts at the Ministry of Interior and Rural Development, WaterSHED is conducting a series of fortnightly workshops to complement the government-led Civic program implementation.
The government has big ambitions to take Civic Champions forward, so being able to continually assess its effectiveness and its costs will be important. There are four main objectives for the M&E training. If successful, participants will be able to effectively:
- Assess the capacity of provincial and district trainers (i.e. training skills, leadership skills);
- Assess the capacity of commune councilors;
- Track and report the program cost at the national level;
- Track and report the program cost at the subnational level.
Read more: blog
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The Cost-Efficiency of the Civic Champions Program
A cost-efficiency analysis of the 2018-2019 iteration of the Civic Champions program found the “systems-approach embodied by Civic Champions to be very cost-efficient, at $23.23 per latrine installed when implemented in developed sanitation markets.” Following the 2015-2016 Scale-Up program, the 2018-2019 iteration is the fourth iteration of Civic Champions since the Pilot in 2011.
The efficiency of the program can be attributed in part to prior WaterSHED investments in developing the local sanitation market, and its work to facilitate complementary actions by the wide array of development actors who work or worked in the same provinces.
This study found that, by effectively integrating and empowering key Cambodian stakeholders responsible for sanitation (i.e., sub-national and local government and households), the program was able to not only reduce foreign development program costs, but also receive considerable government contribution, and achieve a high household leverage ratio.
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Case study on Cambodia’s rural toilet businesses
Following the publication in 2018 of Scaling Market-Based Sanitation (MBS), USAID WASHPaLS deepened the research with a series of complementary in-depth case studies. Focused on mature market-based sanitation (MBS) programs in Cambodia, India, and Nigeria, they present a more nuanced understanding of the factors that influence the viability and sustainability of enterprises.
The Cambodia case study focuses on the network of sanitation enterprises supported by WaterSHED’s Hands-Off MBS intervention in Cambodia.
Analyses revealed that most sanitation enterprises that received support from WaterSHED’s programming were sustainable, in part because of the Hands-Off commitment to avoid creating financial or operational dependencies on non-market support. Also, critically, the program brokered linkages among different actors in the market system by encouraging direct interactions from the start.
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