Preface

"Water Supplies Managed by Rural Communities"
Country reports and case studies from Cameroon, Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Nepal and Pakistan

This document is the result of a collective effort by six teams from organizations operating in the water supply and sanitation sector in Cameroon, Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Nepal and Pakistan. Coordinated by the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, they are carrying out a four-year research project on the role of community participation in the management of rural water supplies in developing countries. This is the first published output of this project.

All teams investigated the extent to which the various water agencies in their respective countries encourage rural communities to manage their own water supply systems. Using staff interviews and document review, they assessed how these agencies involve the communities in their work and address them as the future managers of their local water supply system. They gathered data on the performance of existing community-managed water supply systems. This information was turned into case studies of the six communities - one per team - which, in most cases, have been managing their improved water supply system for several years.

Each team proceeded in its own way using a common table of contents and checklist, prepared by the IRC team on the basis of an earlier international workshop on community management of rural water supplies held in The Hague in November 19921. The checklist and guidelines are reproduced in Appendix A. They cover such elements as the overall situation of the rural water supply sector, the various governmental and non-governmental actors involved in the sector, the administrative and legal frameworks for community water management, the types of systems introduced by the various agencies, the participation procedures used for establishing the systems, the attention paid to gender balance in work and decision-making, the preparation for future management tasks, and the monitoring of results obtained from community management.

The present document gives an overview of the situation at the beginning of the project. The country studies were used by the teams for comparing experiences during a planning and training workshop of all teams which was held in November 1994 in The Netherlands. During that workshop a joint research design for the next project phase was developed, and strategies were determined for selecting and evaluating the communities to be studied.

Subsequently, the teams and the local research groups from the identified project communities will review the local management processes and results, identify strengths and weaknesses, and seek ways to improve performance. They will develop a participatory research and action methodology which both groups can continue to use for other situations, and which can be shared with fellow water organizations and colleagues.