Sustainability
Sustainability is the elusive prize of successful school WASH programs. This is because though not without its difficulties, the SWASH+ experience has shown that setting up the physical infrastructure (hardware) is but one component of school WASH projects. The maintenance of this infrastructure and the adoption of hygiene beliefs and practices that once were non-existent is another matter.
In 2008, three years after the fact, SWASH+ Kenya conducted a study of a safe water system pilot project that had inspired the SWASH+ program. Only five out of the 55 schools studied met enough of the criteria for sustainability to be deemed successful. SWASH+ used this study to draw up conditions for sustainability within the Kenyan context and is testing these factors within certain schools that are receiving school WASH upgrades under the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme. The factors are:
Access to water: All had access to rainwater in their school compounds during the rainy season and four out of five schools had a water source less than or equal to half a kilometer in distance during the dry season.
Funding: All five schools reported the school having a budget for WASH; four schools used these funds to buy water treatment products and three to buy soap.
Trained champions: All successful schools had active head teachers and /or patrons directly involved with the water and sanitation activities. These schools also reported still having the same teachers (patrons) that had been trained by CARE, one of the implementing partners. In addition, four out of five schools reported having patrons involved in water and sanitation activities. Four out five schools reported the school management committee doing some activities on water, sanitation and hygiene.
Observed benefits: Four out of five schools reported the importance of observed health benefits during the period of the intervention as a contributing factor in continuing safe water system activities.
The keys to sustainability are not dissimilar in Central America, based on the Secretariat’s observations of implementation-to-date. They include:
Funding models: SWASH+ partners have found that direct transfers to community-level parents committees can be effective for building sustainability if they are accompanied by training in financial administration, purchasing procedures, and labor organization. The construction timeframe stretches and the quality of the works may suffer if the hired skilled laborer sees no possibility of becoming a repeat client of a community committee, but the potential payoff in long-term community involvement is good, making sustained success more likely. Implementation through local governments and local partner NGOs can also be effective at building local capacity.
Government Policy: Governments are permanent supporters of improvements in schools and working with them is expedient for sustainability. In Central America, the four governments have varying levels of interest in, and experience with school WASH. El Salvador, for example, is the only country with national norms for school sanitation. The El Salvadoran government has been the largest SWASH+ Central America donor to-date and five different government agencies have supervised implementation there. The program in El Salvador, however, lacks emphasis in behavior change through hygiene education. Guatemala, as another example, has prioritized 41 municipalities for a “Healthy Schools” initiative led by the Ministry of Health which emphasizes health and hygiene education, but lacks funds for infrastructure. Both provide examples of why needs are different, and school selection in the project has not been consistent, and how SWASH+ can target funds to maximize overall impact and sustainability.
Behavior change: Hygiene behavior change, perhaps the most important component of SWASH+, cannot be achieved in one or two years. In Central America, schools are reported as “complete” when infrastructure has been finished, but a supervisory/monitoring presence is necessary for at least two years in each school to ensure that teachers maintain hygiene education as a high-priority activity. In order to improve the sustainability and effectiveness of school WASH hygiene education components, local teachers should lead the development of hygiene education activity plans and classroom training, and district-level Ministry of Education officials should lead supervision of the implementation of the activity plans. The SWASH+ MWA partners enjoy the support of the World Water Corps®(a program of Water For People), a volunteer program that can provide long-term monitoring of the program without being dependent on future grant funding.