For the second time this year, all project owners of the six difference VIA Water projects in Mali were invited to join the VIA Water café on the 21st of December. After getting to know each other and the projects better during the first meeting (September 2017) it was now time to dive into more detail into the projects. We started with an exchange on how the Sharing Skills seminar contributed to the daily working life of the project owners. What was most appriciated were the different personality types and how they can respond to each other, and which ways of communication work best when working in a team with different types of people. After this we had a group discussion on the main challenges related to Management, HR, Marketing, Communication and Finance. Per group people noted their main three challanges and after that we discussed them one by one. The most important challanges were related to the sustainability aspect of the project after the funding, how to make sure users will use their new application, webiste of platform, how to make the project well known to a broad public and how to deal with 'partners' who don't want to cooperate. Due to lack of time we couldn't do the second activity planned for the day, but we have decided to discuss to topic of sustainability during the next VIA Water café that will probably be held during the visit of Titia mid februari.
Second VIA Water café in Mali
27 December 2017 10:07 UTC
Thanks Lars for this report. One more question from my side would be what sort of support would the projectowners need from VIA Water to be able to face their challenges? Projectowners, please let me know, so we can adjust our programming the coming year to your needs. Titia
The VIA projects in Mali appear to be wonderful, with good collaboration! Lars raises an issue, however, that appears again and again in many development projects, in many places: "The most important challanges were (are) related to the sustainability aspect of the project after the funding."
Donors push implemnters, albeit subtly, to make beneficiaries accountable for sustainability, in the short run. A result is that projects have failed again and again, and in many places, nearly all such efforts have failed.
While beneficiaries do need to be accountable in this way, the donors need to make a bigger effort to insure sustainability. They need to give the implementers more support in encouraging the kinds of partnerships, eg. with in-country NGOs, to insure real longevity.
The most important challanges were related to the sustainability aspect of the project after the funding
Thanks Titia, for the re-iteration of this important question. The fact is that donors need to find serious ways of giving project implementers more support, in the all-important task of forming partnerships. Such partnerships will be with whomever works on such projects, be they NGOs or government or whomever. So many of these want to start new projects, while on-going ones need support.
I think it is as much about donors giving implementers more support (and flexibility) as the implementers themselves thinking about sustainability already during project/programme design. Project implementers need to be more consious of (and ready for) the end of (full) donor support.