Learning alliances ‘could help countries scale up to meet MDGs’

Learning Alliances can help countries to scale up to meet their Millennium Development Goal targets, by acting as engines for change in water, sanitation and hygiene education.

But countries have to focus on innovation, quality and sustainability to break a cycle of failure in which services first fail to reach the poorest people, then fail to deliver safe water or hygienic sanitation and, within a few years, fail altogether.

This was the consensus at the Symposium for Learning Alliances hosted by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and UNESCO-IHE in Delft, the Netherlands. The symposium, from 7-9 June 2005, attracted 113 participants from 32 countries, who focused on how alliances could be built at country level to learn from the lessons of failure and to build on islands of success.

Platforms for change

Learning Alliances are designed as platforms for change – bringing key stakeholders together to scale up success stories in water, sanitation and hygiene education. They are action-orientated forums where research results are shared with policy makers and programme managers, who make themselves accountable to communities, judged by real-life results on the ground.

The Delft symposium was itself a learning experience – an opportunity to hear country experiences and to define problems and solutions – and there was no final declaration. But the panel debate that closed the symposium found a degree of consensus that learning alliances could contribute to short term as well as long term change.

Panel debate: Atem Ramsundersingh, Kathy Shordt, Henk van Norden, Thoko Sigwaza, Tom Remington, Frank Jaspers  

© photo P. McIntyre

However, there was concern that rigid monitoring of programmes by “log frames” and tick boxes is failing to measure quality or the process of learning which must inform a new approach to development.

"From leading to learning"

Atem Ramsundersingh, team leader for the World Bank Institute's Global Development Learning Network, (on a video conference link from Washington) called for a shift from a mechanical approach based on management, procedures and satisfying donors towards organic and flexible learning-based methods of working. "From leading to learning", as he phrased it.

The key was to work with greater creativity. “Do not focus on making the donor happy, but on satisfying those on the ground. It can be done under the present system if a learning alliance is driven by a sense of urgency and a desire to solve problems on the ground. We need a strong sense of community and of urgency because we do not have much time.”

He added: “Learning alliances can be a help for sustainable development and a real contribution to the MDGs. The MDG targets are for immediate action tomorrow, but the aspirations of the MDGs do have space for learning.”

Henk van Norden, UNICEF senior adviser for water and sanitation, agreed that learning approaches were compatible with management tools. Donors had required the use of results based management tools, because “in the absence of such tools we were meandering around unable to show what we had achieved.”

A team from South Africa described how the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF), local government, and other organisations came together in a process of Masibambane (“let’s work together”) and how the Water Information Network had been formed to meet their joint need for better quality information.

"Donors should accomdate to your strategy"

Thoko Sigwaza, DWAF director of water and sanitation services, said that the MDGs provided a focus and South Africa has set its own ambitious targets to scale up water services by 2008 and sanitation services by 2010. However, scaling up worked best when the national government and its local allies set the agenda. “Donors should accommodate to your strategy – not the other way round.”

Tom Remington from Catholic Relief Services in Kenya said: “I think that the MDGs will help us to go to scale. Organisations that adopt a pilot approach never scale up. It takes  a lot of work to go to scale and there is a lot of risk. It is much easier to stay in your pilot.”

Rosario Aurora Villaluna, Director of the STREAMS coalition of resource centres, agreed, but said that in some countries, like the Philippines, commitment to MDGs did not extend to all of the key players. “National government is committed to the MDGs, but the sad reality is that you do not see local government commitment to them. Some local governments do not even see that they are part of the commitment.”

Push for target at expense of quality and sustaninability" 

Patrick Moriarty, head of knowledge development and advocacy at IRC, expressed concern that the push to meet targets could be at the expense of quality and sustainability, as had happened in the 1980s Water and Sanitation Decade. “We have seen that in some countries 30-50% of installed systems are not working in villages. We have heard of places whether there is 90% coverage but only 10% have good quality water. The experience of the past seems to be that targets and sustainability are not compatible.”

Kathleen Shordt, IRC senior programme officer, said that management tools needed to become simpler if implementing organisations on the ground were to be equal partners in the process. “The log frame as it is used today is the enemy of innovation. I have seen 16, 18, 20 page log frames. They give power only to managers who can read that stuff. The people we are participating with cannot understand it. I would cut it by a half or a third.”

However, Frank Jaspers, head of management and institutions at UNESCO-IHE, said that log frames could be used to record success. “Donors are aware that programmes are nearly all fragmented, and that is why they are moving to framework agreements and to basket funding. They have to look at sustainability as a crucial factor. We are not confined by the log frames – we can use them to get more funds.”

Mamadou Bagayoko, UNICEF Education Officer in Burkina Faso, said that learning alliances could result in swift action. “A learning alliance should not be seen as a place for learning per se. It is for the preparation of informed decision making and activity on the ground. People think that learning will take for ever but this is a false debate. If you learn from other people you have a wider impact in a short time.”