Women conversing

USAID's Impact: Ex-Post Evaluation Series

At a water point

The positive impacts of USAID’s water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) activities are often hard to dispute, especially during the immediate time period after projects come to a close. But how sustainable are these outcomes several years later?

The USAID Water Team, through its Water Communications and Knowledge Management project (Water CKM), conducted a series of six independent ex-post evaluations to better understand the long-term impact and sustainability of its WASH-related interventions. This evaluation series helped USAID understand whether and how its activity results have been sustained years after WASH projects close and inform future USAID investments in the sector.

Ex-Post Evaluation Synthesis

This synthesis summarizes key findings from a series of six independent ex-post evaluations that assessed the extent to which USAID–funded WASH activities sustained outcomes three to 10 years after closure and which factors drove those outcomes. The findings are meant to foster learning and improve evidence-based sustainable development assistance at USAID and across stakeholders in the WASH sector.

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USAID Conducted Ex-Post Evaluations In Six Countries

Published June 2017. The first evaluation in the series explores the sustainability of the sanitation and hygiene components of the RANO-HP activity, implemented in 26 communes from 2009–2013.
Published August 2017. The second evaluation in the series examines the sustainability of water utility capacity building, microcredit, and financial outcomes associated with the ESP activity, which was implemented from 2004–2010.
Published May 2018. The third evaluation in the series the examines the long-term sustainability of outcomes related to rural water point construction, rehabilitation, and management, as well as participatory sanitation and hygiene education and construction related to the the MWA-EP activity, implemented in 24 rural districts between 2004–2009.
Published September 2018. This evaluation is the fourth in the series. It examines how urban water and sanitation services in India have changed since FIRE-D closed and to what extent policies, practices, and financing mechanisms introduced through FIRE-D have been sustained.
Published July 2019. The fifth ex-post evaluation in the series looks at the PEPAM project (Programme d’Eau Potable et d’Assainissement du Millénaire au Sénégal), implemented from 2009–2014 to improve sustainable access to WASH in four regions of Senegal.
Published July 2020. The sixth and final ex-post evaluation in the series looked at the WASH component of the Strengthening Communities through Integrated Programming (SCIP) activity implemented from 2009–2015 in Zambézia Province, Mozambique.
Washing hands

Criteria

  • All activities included in the series must have been closed for a minimum of three years and could not be recipients of Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance or Food for Peace funding.
  • Preference is given to USAID missions that are at a point in their design cycle to incorporate learnings into upcoming WASH programs.

This evaluation series builds upon USAID and Rotary International’s WASH Sustainability Index Tool, which is a framework to assess a WASH activity’s likelihood to be sustainable according to the following factors: availability of finance for sanitation; local capacity for construction and maintenance of latrines; the influence of social norms; and governance.