Executive Summary:

While there has been significant progress in providing safe water access around the world, however, the challenge of sustainability remains. Many water systems break down after only a few years, forcing families to revert back to old sources of contaminated water causing the social, economic and health benefits to be lost. There are many factors that contribute to this issue but we are convinced that the common thread in each of these challenges is the lack of efficient data collection and sharing.

In order to improve data sharing, we need to reinvent the way we collect data. As the availability of mobile data coverage increases across Africa, it presents opportunities to use mobile technology more effectively. By providing our staff and partners with smartphones and software that allows for paper reports and surveys to be moved to an online platform, data can be made meaningful and actionable. The ongoing monitoring of a community water system can be easily shared with all key stakeholders (donors, governments, and implementers) through a well-designed information dashboard.

A $60,000 investment from Stronger Philanthropy will enable GAiN to partner with mWater, a respected mobile data technology company, to develop a customized data-collection platform and provide the necessary hardware, training, and resources for two years of program-wide monitoring and evaluation. The entire system would be designed, launched, and tested over a two year period.  Primary design and development would be concluded in the first six months, training completed by the end of the first year, and one additional year of monitoring and evaluating the system to ensure its long-term success.

This innovative solution will have a significant impact on the sustainability of water systems as the enhanced response mechanisms of ongoing monitoring will decrease system failures and the evaluation and sharing of data will improve long-term investment from donors to provide necessary follow up support in communities. This project will serve as a catalyst to help solve multiple key challenges faced by water users, GAiN and even donors. Based on our current well functionality, we estimate that this project will enable sustainable safe water access for 148,000 more people in rural Africa by 2020 (specifically in Benin, Togo, Tanzania, and Ethiopia). Over 1500 of our donors will also be impacted as they are engaged in collaborative learning and development. As this is a significant capacity building project, its impact will continue into all the future work of GAiN.

Measurable Outcomes:

1) A 10% increase in the sustainability of our existing water points (148,000 more people will have ongoing access to clean water) by the end of the project.

2) Regular mobile reports from the field to the head office will increase (from 0 to 250 per month) by the end of the project.

3) A sharable data visualization platform for donor partnership reporting will be developed and implemented for 1500 major donors by the end of the project.