Development Aspects Impressum Editors

Success factors

The good results of the CD project can be attributed to a number of factors, as follows (UNESCO-IHE, 2011):

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  About 2,200 persons from the 11 towns participated in the programme, took ownership of the WaSH problems in their town and took up the formulation and implementation of individual and joint action plans.
  
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  There was a high level of appreciation of the courses by those who had been trained. Training was conducted professionally and by knowledgeable trainers, materials were good and offered much desired opportunities for further learning. Also, the participatory methodologies were highly appreciated and venues were appropriate for learning.
  
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  Participants were and are interacting with and learning from each other (across stakeholder groups, across hierarchical and social strata and across towns and nations) during the delivery of the CD programme, the subsequent exchange visits and the top-level consultation sessions.
  
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  Leading practices were adapted and applied and inter-town and inter-country
  

exchanges were established as a basis for continued learning and practice.

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  The programme of town-wide CD interventions was developed by the interna- tional partners and NETWAS based on a shared understanding of WaSH, ena- bling prerequisites and a jointly agreed CD approach and methodology.
  
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  The process and methodologies used by the international partners proved quite
  

effective. These included the SAR methodology used for the inquiry, the regular

partner meetings, the training needs assessment, the training of trainers (TOT) and coaching sessions, the participatory learning and action orientation of the CD interventions and, last but not least, the devotion of the participants to the implementation of their action plans.

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  Knowledge activities focused on bringing out evidence-based knowledge from experience in the field with LVWATSANI actors, documenting experiences through the systematic action research methodology in the inception phase, identifying cases of best and worst practice encountered during the inquiries and capturing the whole capacity-building programme in the LVWATSAN Initiative (e.g. Blokland, 2011).
  

Finally, the top-level consultations indicated the large number of initiatives and innovative solutions that had been successfully embarked upon by local stakehold- ers whilst the declarations drawn up during the same meetings also highlighted constraints that needed to be overcome to achieve the somewhat more complex initiatives. The TLCs also demonstrated the importance and effectiveness of the cooperation of the various non-state actors and state actors. This confirmed the CD consortium’s perception that a much-needed paradigm shift was under way whereby partnership, equity and sustainability were hence considered to be indis- pensable ingredients for the provision of effective environmental services.

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