East Meets West a program of Thrive Networks
East Meets West (EMW) contracted with the Mekong Development Research Institute (MDRI) to conduct an independent evaluation of EMW’s CHOBA program.
The main objectives of the research were to determine 1) to what degree increases in improved sanitation coverage in the targeted areas could be causally attributed to the program and 2) the impacts of different program interventions on increasing coverage.
In less than four years, more than 110,000 hygienic toilets were built by poor Vietnamese families under the CHOBA program. In 508 participating communities, the percentage of poor households with hygienic latrines more than tripled, narrowing the ‘sanitation access gap’ between rich and poor dramatically. Another 32,000 non-poor households built latrines under CHOBA’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.
From baseline to end line, the full CHOBA package resulted in an approximately 17 percentage point increase in septic tank ownership as compared to controls. There is a clear additive effect from the combination of household and community-level incentives. The research also demonstrated that the rebate-only package was more effective at mobilizing households than the CCT-only package. The CHOBA program has definitively accelerated the delivery of properly designed latrines and septic tanks to the Vietnamese rural poor, and the OBA model should be expanded as a form of sanitation policy by developing world governments.
| CHOBA has definitively accelerated delivery … and the OBA model should be expanded as a form of sanitation policy by developing world governments. |
Authors: Chi Nguyen, Cuong Nguyen, Tung Phung, Hanh Nguyen, Per Ljung , Daniel Westbrook, and Jeff Albert
This poster was presented on May 12, 2016 at WASH Futures, Brisbane Australia.
Funding for this research (and the program evaluated by it) was generously provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Poster:
Smart Subsidies Help the Rural Poor Climb the Sanitation Ladder – C. Nguyen, et al.
View Poster
Additional material:
Smart Subsidies Help the Rural Poor Climb the Sanitation Ladder – Per Ljung – PPT Download PowerPoint
At the heart of our programs are strong partnerships with government, private sector, civil society groups, and local communities. We also implement learning and feedback strategies to strengthen our approaches to promoting gender and socially inclusive WASH practices in our partner communities.
