A Tale of Two Villages: Lessons from Two Water Supply, Sanitation, and Health Education Schemes in North Gondar, Ethiopia

This 11-page report published by WaterAid Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Development and Inter-Church Aid Commission (EOC-DICAC) is an evaluation of two water supply, sanitation, and hygiene education projects (WSSHEP) undertaken seven years prior to the evaluation in two villages in Northern Ethiopia. The evaluation revealed that the two interventions have had vastly different outcomes over the seven year period. One village, Atsede Mariam, has used the management of their water scheme to fund a range of independently-conceived community development projects, while the other village, Bohoma, has allowed their scheme to fall into a state of disrepair and to become a source of conflict.

According to the report, part of the difference in outcomes can be attributed to local conditions and attitudes. In Atsede Mariam, access to water is an extremely high priority in the village, and villagers do not mind paying a small fee in exchange for not having to spend upwards of 6 hours a day fetching water. This allows them to pay guards to keep cattle away from the distribution points, to regulate the water usage, and to fund additional community projects. In Bohoma, access to water is not as high a priority, and there is a sense that water is provided by God and should be free, so villagers do not pay for it. Because of this, they cannot provide guards at distribution points to keep cattle away, and the water taps run constantly, making the distribution points messy.

EOC-DICAC recognises that the lack of community management in Bohoma could also be due in part to the nature of the organisation's communication strategies and the lack of follow-up.

The document outlines some key findings and recommendations which include:

• Positive exposure and exchange: According to the report, some of Atsede Mariam's success is attributed to the presence of individuals who have outside exposure. There is a strong case for offering communities without this exposure something that will enrich and motivate their perceptions. This could be done through direct community exchanges or through visual presentations about a success story.
• All-stakeholder programme contract: It could be advisable to make full stakeholder meetings from the very first stages of contact with a community a standard practice. This includes the community, non-governmental organisations, and local government, ensuring all parties are on board, and have a signed agreement.
• Consider building in an on-going support and follow-up strategy to WSSHEP programme design: Although this has implications for funding and staffing, it may in the end be more economical (as well as better development practice) to return to a community to offer support, than to hand-over to a community and find that some years later the scheme is neglected and the initial funding therefore wasted.
• Raise the profile of gender equality in WSSHEP and ensure vulnerable groups are included in decisionmaking: Discussions in both villages showed that women’s participation was fairly weak and suggests the need for greater emphasis on equal gender representation from the programme outset. While there are various factors that prevent women from engaging in community meetings, more effort needs to be made to involve them, perhaps through other mechanisms such as women’s groups or coffee ceremonies.