New Participatory Frameworks for the Design and Management of Sustainable Water Supply and Sanitation Projects

摘要

The notion of sustainability is drastically changing the design of donor-funded projects. Traditional frameworks for analyzing projects have focused on strategies to mobilize community support for a project; currently, primary attention is being placed on strategies to enable and encourage local communities to take responsibility for and control of development projects. The paper explores, in the context of water supply and sanitation projects, what new analytical frameworks are necessary to achieve the goal of sustainability, how the concept of sustainability changes perceptions of community participation and women's involvement, and what all this means to donors in terms of project design, implementation, and evaluation. The report also describes several practical strategies for sustainability. Case histories from a CARE project in Rwanda and a U.N. Development Program project in Kenya exemplify these strategies. A brief final section draws implications for project management and evaluation.