Thematic reviews
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We are committed to maximising our contribution towards reaching everyone, everywhere with clean water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030. To achieve this, evaluations and reviews are essential to organisational accountability and learning; they allow us to reflect, learn and improve our work to meet this commitment.
In our Global Evaluation Policy, we commit to conduct one thematic review per year to explore a specific area of our work, shining a spotlight on new opportunities and challenges we need to address to continuously strengthen our work. The Global Evaluation Policy describes WaterAid’s minimum requirements for evaluation. Its purpose is to:
- Direct WaterAid members and country programmes
- Inform and assure WaterAid stakeholders of our commitments and key practices expected from our reviews and evaluations
Sector strengthening for sustainable services
We commissioned an external evaluation to assess how our approach to sector strengthening is understood and operationalised within our national teams. The evaluation sought to find out how we can support governments and service providers most effectively to meet the SDG targets.
The evaluation found that we are on the right track as our "approach is relevant to addressing WASH sector issues at global, national and local levels and is an appropriate response to meet the goal of universal WASH access by 2030". The evaluation provided a number of concrete recommendations on how we can improve our work.
Download the full report (PDF)
WASH in the health sector and WASH access for people with disabilities
The first evaluation focused on the themes of WASH in the health sector and WASH access for people with disabilities, which fall under our strategic aims of Equality and Integration.
The evaluation found that WaterAid has a high level of internal awareness of and commitment to inclusion. Furthermore, our integration work has been successful for the relationships between WASH, health, nutrition and maternal and child health; national-level capacity building and improved coordination; and good examples of service delivery in healthcare settings. The evaluation also identified areas for improvement through a number of recommendations that now act as a mandate for us to address challenges more systematically.
Read the executive summary (PDF)
Gender equality
Reducing gender inequality, within and through WASH, is essential to achieving our goal of ensuring everyone, everywhere can realise their right to safe WASH realise.
The evaluation found mixed sentiments around the prioritisation of gender in WASH work, although it noted that these tensions are moving towards resolution through the development of our Global Strategy 2022-32. Across the review, space for deeper and meaningful reflection on biases or attitudes to gender was found to be a key sentiment. The evaluation found that teams made steady and meaningful progress on their journey to gender transformative WASH when two features were present: self-reflective environments that adopt a ‘work in progress’ attitude, and leadership who take committed action as gender champions. Our mission will only be realised through strategic, ambitious action that tackles gender inequality head on. The Global Strategy looks well-positioned to enable this.
