Promoting evidence-based programming by sector partners To provide research support to UNICEF in order to improve the social impact and cost-effectiveness of UNICEF’s water, sanitation and hygiene interventions.

IDinsight will determine which evaluation activity is most appropriate (impact evaluation, nimble process evaluation, data analysis support, among others) to generate the evidence needed to answer several of the questions identified by UNICEF’s WASH teams in Kenya and the Philippines.

Mission

To provide research support to UNICEF in order to improve the social impact and cost-effectiveness of UNICEF’s water, sanitation and hygiene interventions

Approach

Project update in Nov 2017 at the "MEDS Convening 2018 Conversations about Sanitation, SDGs and Research Patna, Bihar, 2017": Lilian Lehman presented on the IDinsight UNICEF learning partnership. IDinsight teams were embedded in two UNICEF country offices to support UNICEF WASH programs to generate and use rigorous evidence to inform decisions on design and scale-up of their interventions. In Kenya UNICEF was interested in finding out how to incorporate nutrition messages into sanitation programming: could it be done? Was it feasible? Would it show an impact? And in The Philippines UNICEF wanted to inform modifications of a sanitation subsidy program to improve access. Lessons learnt from this partnership include: • Embeddedness is central to understanding the program and identifying evidence needs / questions not immediately obvious • Capacity building is mutually beneficial, allows evaluation team to identify needs and focuses on implementation team “mind-set shift” • Longer time-lines (~2.5 years min.) for integration and alignment with program cycle, esp. for question sourcing and follow-up • A suite of evaluation methodologies should be considered, as not all decision-relevant questions in need of better evidence lend themselves to an impact evaluation • Alignment of key stakeholders and funding from beginning is critical for follow-up and scaling

Information on website of grantee

BMGF grant database (brief information)

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Filter / Tags

Behaviour changeHealth and hygienePolitical processes and institutional aspectsEnabling environment and institutional strengtheningBill & Melinda Gates FoundationPrivate sector, including social enterprises

Related Countries

KenyaPhilippines