Client | Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) |
Donor | DFID through British Red Cross (BRC) |
Country | Kenya |
Service | Summative Evaluation |
Sector | Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) |
Period | October 2017 – November 2017 |
Consultants | Donnelly Mwachi (Lead), Misheck Kirimi, Martha Mutoni, Kevin Otieno |
Universal access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) is crucial for the elimination of poverty, and underpins all aspects of social, economic, and sustainable development. It is estimated that at least 783 million people still lack access to improved drinking water sources and, with 2.4 billion people still lacking access. In Kenya, it is estimated that there is only 61% for water and 29% for sanitation coverage5. This affects all sections of society. Women and girls are traditionally responsible for water collection; this is time-consuming: they have to walk for long walking distances to water points and this exposes them to threats and violence. Lack of sanitation facilities adds to this insecurity, strips them of their dignity and therefore they have no privacy to handle menstrual issues.
The potential of WASH interventions for disease prevention is enormous. This supports a health agenda that focuses on prevention as well as treatment. Unclean water, inadequate sanitation and lack of hygiene are associated with a plethora of deadly and/or debilitating diseases which have profound impact on the health, welfare, and productivity of developing country populations. They include diarrhoea, still one of the leading causes of under-five mortality. They also include, but are not limited to, pneumonia, cholera, typhoid, schistosomiasis, trachoma, guinea worm and rotavirus. Vulnerable population groups, such as those living with HIV/Aids and children with vulnerable immune systems are more susceptible to falling ill in the absence of adequate WASH services.
Access to WASH services also helps in improving education outcomes, both by reducing
the time spent on fetching water, meaning that children are able to attend school, and by reducing the incidence of WASH-related diseases which lead to missed school days. However, recent data from least-developed and low-income countries, Kenya included, show that, in 2011, only 51% of schools had an adequate water source and only 45% had adequate hygienic sanitation facilities. Nearly half of the girls who drop out of primary school in Kenya do so because of the lack of clean water and sanitation facilities. Once girls reach menstruation age, many more miss school days or drop out of school altogether because schools lack clean and private sanitation facilities that allow for menstrual hygiene management. This ultimately affects girls’ and women’s opportunities for economic prosperity and well-being and constitutes a severe impediment to gender equality.
The Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) has been implementing a three-year (2014-2017) Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) project in Chepalungu and Bomet Central sub counties in Bomet County. The project’s overarching aim was to improve hygiene and sanitation practices and access to improved water and sanitation services for 61,898 people in the county as at the end of the project. KRCS implemented the project in partnership with the County Government of Bomet (CGB). The project was funded by DFID (Aid Match) through British Red Cross with contribution from CGB. The project was implemented in two sub-counties (Chepalungu and Bomet Central). The target community include boys, girls, men and women including people differently-abled.
The main aim of the End Term Evaluation (ETE) was to document results of the project and approaches based on the five criteria (relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability) recommended by OECD-DAC. The specific objectives were to:
- Establish current WASH coverage as per the project log frame indicator
- Identify lessons learned, good practice and challenges encountered during the
delivery of the Project - Determine the impacts – as far as possible – of the recent changes in strategy for
behaviours change based on lessons identified during Mid Term Review. - Determine community and stakeholder’s engagement in the implementation of
the project. - Review strategies applied by the project and provide recommendations to be
adopted in future WASH projects
The adopted approach in defining project indicators at ETE was aimed at ensuring consistency with baseline and MTR approaches for credible comparability. The evaluation collected qualitative and quantitative data from primary and secondary sources. Data from these sources were triangulated as much as possible in order to arrive at accurate and reliable analysis. Four methods were used to collect qualitative data, namely: literature review, Key Informant Interviews (KIIs), Focus Group Discussion (FGDs) and Direct Observation. A Household semi-structured questionnaire was administered to collect primary qualitative data from beneficiary households. In addition, some quantitative data was obtained from primary sources. Household questionnaire covered issues on household demographics, water issues, use of sanitation and perceptions; hygiene including hand-washing; management/governance, among others.
The target population of the ETE was 61,898 people spread across the two sub-counties.
The survey’s primary sampling units were villages while the households were the secondary sampling units. The sampling frame consisted of the list of all villages and households that were targeted by the project. For qualitative data, the sampling methodology was mainly purposive, meant to ensure that most resourceful informants were selected. Convenient sampling was applied to sample schools. Households sample size was determined using Fischer’s (1998) formula. The ETE used mobile phones (Kobo app) for data collection. In total 873 households were interviewed and factored in the final analysis.
Implementation took place in the first term of devolved governance of the WASH functions in Kenya (2003-2017). In many ways, this was a learning period on how devolved units could deliver. Lessons learned in this project are therefore important and can be replicated in similar projects in Bomet and other counties. In particular, it was noted that devolved funds and political responsibility alone could not translate to service delivery because the county lacked the necessary technical capacity. In this respect the CGB and the KRCS formed complementary partnership that delivered an exemplary project. The partnership was highly transparent and enjoyed mutual trust. The resulting project was aligned with MDGs for WASH, which have now given way to related SGDs, as well as the integrated county development plan.
The project sought to create an impact through improved health as a consequence of better access to safe and sustainable water supply, basic sanitation, and better hygiene. A key impact indicator was the prevalence of diarrhoea among children under five years (U5). Proportion of U5 affected by diarrhoeal diseases (based on two weeks recall period) was 14.7 percent at baseline. This declined to 10.5 percent at mid-term review and 6.7 percent at ETE. The project’s outputs and outcomes discussed below demonstrate how the project contributed to the achievement of this indicator.
The project delivered a complete new water supply system that is partly gravity-driven (70%) and partly electrically-boosted (30%) and currently serving a total population of 56,260 people or 91 percent of the project target population of 61,898 .The population accessing safe water was distributed as follows: 34 water points (38,547 people); boarding schools and health facilities (4,918 people); individual connections on a flat rate (11,115 people); and school rainwater harvesting systems (1,680 people). An unquantified number of people were also accessing the project’s water via vendor supply service outside the project area. Geographically, the project’s water supply covers 200 km2 or 10 percent of the county’s surface area.
The decision to concentrate resources in one major project instead of several isolated ones was the project’s decisive success factor. A system design that allowed most of the water to flow by gravity reduced the cost of water pumping that previously made water expensive and the service unsustainable. One of the factors that previously overwhelmed Bomet Water and Sewerage Company (BOMWASCO) was high electricity bills. There were strong indications that the new water supply would be sustained through existing cost-recovery measures within BOMWASCO’s management model. However, the company was relatively new and required further support in capacity development. On the other hand, the (previous) county government was not keen to invest in software interventions regarding sanitation and hygiene promotion. If the current government does not change this stance, the momentum created under this project may not be sustained.
The project’s intervention on latrine and hand-washing facilities reached a total of 130 villages. Total population reached with hygiene and sanitation activities was 57, 464 people (9,578 households). Ten (10) villages were declared ODF and 8 villages had raised claim. A total of 8,113 households had a latrine while a total of 6,159 had both a latrine and a hand-washing facility. In addition, 5,157 school children have access to improved latrine facilities (separate for boys and girls and disabled access) and hand-washing facilities with soap and water.
The ETE concluded that this was a well-designed and professionally delivered project. Key challenges were delays in the release of funds from the county, lack of commitment by some county officers, frequent transfers of project trained public health officers. county government’s low prioritization of hygiene and sanitation over water; and the initial community resistance to CLTS.
The evaluation recommended that KRCS sustains its working relationship with County Government of Bomet by developing and implementing new joint projects. KRCS should lobby for the newly-elected government to allocate more resources for implementation of focused WASH projects. Specifically, BOMWASCO needs further facilitation to realize its full socio-economic potential and to modernize its operations. Despite the existence of many water resources in Bomet Central, which were not covered by the new water system, a sizeable proportion of the population use water from unimproved sources. Water supply in other sub-counties, particularly Bomet East, was reported to be equally poor. These are potential areas for further KRCS-CGB cooperation. Further, it is recommended that KRCS remains active in Sigor Water Scheme for at least one more year to influence policy and help to solidify the project’s operations.
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