That commitment is yielding results in villages and communities in Africa and Asia. It is a commitment shared by national partners, WSSCC and the GSF donors.
National programmes generating results
Key results of the Global Sanitation Fund programmes, as described in our most recent summary report, include:
- 102,970 people with improved toilets.
- 68,860 people in over 500 communities in Madagascar, Malawi and India now live in cleaner environments free of open defecation.
- 2,641 communities have participated in demand creation activities in the countries listed above as well as in Cambodia, Nepal, Senegal and Uganda.
- 661,000 people have heard about the importance of good hygiene through community activities and communications campaigns.
Since the GSF is a sanitation financing mechanism, the flow of finances is also a key indicator of programme implementation. To date:
- US$ 43.5 million has been committed to seven country programmes and US$ 4.3 million invested in GSF management and development operations.
- US$ 21.5 million has been allocated provisionally to start programmes in five more countries in 2012, and associated GSF management and development operations in Geneva.
- The amount allocated is 100 percent of the US$ 75 million pledged to WSSCC by its donors for the GSF. To implement programmes in all 12 countries over five years, additional resources of US$ 9.1 million are required.
- US$ 11 million is committed by Executing Agencies (EAs) to sub-grantees and service providers, which is 41 percent of the planned amount to be committed in the programme designs.
- 68 out of 135 sub-grantees are contracted to work on the ground, which together with current commitments and disbursements provides a good indication on overall programme progress.
Further added value
- The GSF is a catalyst for funding mechanisms in Uganda and Tanzania.
- GSF structures are providing a platform for sector-wide collaboration, as in Nigeria and Senegal.
- The GSF is having a positive impact on government systems such as Nepal and Malawi.
- Models are emerging that can impact the sector as a whole, and sharing knowledge and lessons learnt across countries has commenced.
Learning by doing: the GSF comes to fruition
WSSCC designed and set up the GSF in 2008 to inject extra finances into countries with high needs for sanitation. Like other major global funds, the early stages in the GSF’s life were devoted to setting up the systems of an innovative programme – both at the global level in WSSCC’s host agency UNOPS and at the national level in the first group of countries. With hindsight WSSCC sees that it underestimated the time it would take to get the systems in place, especially those in country. However, from this first phase the GSF now has a clear Results Framework and Monitoring and Evaluation system, and there have been benefits to the collaborative approach that the GSF takes.
The process of bringing together around one table all the leading agencies concerned with sanitation in a particular country has been itself exciting and productive. In country after country WSSCC has seen that this collaboration is generating better understanding, and more consistent policies and programmes – in effect, that the presence of the GSF has achieved useful results even before the first sub-grantees start their field work. The GSF’s main aim is directly increasing the number of people with improved sanitation, and that is rightly the benchmark against which it will be judged. 2011 was the year in which the GSF has started to achieve tangible progress on this in a significant number of countries.
GSF can be replicated in many countries
The GSF is now a reality and can be replicated and rolled out to many countries. WSSCC continues to receive much demand for GSF support in places where the sanitation needs are great. WSSCC’s Medium-Term Strategic Plan (MTSP) 2012-2016 identifies 35 priority countries in which the GSF could and should be working, which contain almost 1.5 billion people without sanitation. The GSF’s ability to meet this demand, and the MTSP target of work programmes in 25 countries by 2016, is impacted by funding availability, and a major factor influencing that funding is the demonstration of cost-effective results at scale.
Attribution and verification of results
GSF-supported activities are always implemented within a wider (sector) environment. As a relatively new sector programme the GSF acknowledges the work that has been done by other actors in previous years that had laid a foundation for GSF’s intervention. In addition, in most countries the GSF is one of a number of current interventions all of which may contribute to the anticipated improvement of the sanitation situation on the ground. The data presented here represents the total number of additional people within our programme focus areas that have been affected by changing sanitation and hygiene behaviour during the life of the GSF intervention. In the future, the GSF intends to conduct specific studies to try to better understand the various inputs of different actors and causal link with the jointly achieved outcomes.
GSF support
WSSCC gratefully acknowledges the donors to the GSF, which are the Governments of Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The majority of the GSF’s funds come from the Netherlands, and in 2010 and 2011, Switzerland reinvested in the GSF whilst Sweden reinvested in 2011 with a further multi-year commitment.
Updated 18 April 2012.
