Transcriber: Shanshan (Alice) Lin Reviewer: Denise RQ
When I was serving as a peace corp volunteer
in Togo, West Africa,
an international organization came through my village
and built hand pumps like this one
to provide water for nearby households.
Three months later,
all of them, had broken down.
No water came out, and no repair was made.
One day, I was walking
and found ears of corn being dried on the platform
of this broken-down pump.
My first thought was "Epic fail".
The goal of this project was to provide
a sustainable source of clean water for poor villagers, right?
But after further consideration,
I realized that the success of development projects depends
on how success is measured, and who measures it.
How would these projects look if the individuals implementing them
measured success in the same way
as the poor villagers they are trying to help?
And how does the measure of success affect project sustainability?
The success of development projects can be measured in several ways.
For example, success can be measured by individual growth.
This project could have contributed to the personal and professional growth
of the people who carried it out.
The measure of success can be institutional;
maybe this project allowed the organization
to show more numbers to donors
which encouraged donors to contribute more for future projects.
The measure of success can be diplomatic.
This project could have improved the opinion West Africans have
of the country or religion the organization represented.
Or by humanitarian standards,
this project could be successful, if, it addressed a predetermined issue,
clean water access,
deemed to be important by the implementing organization.
And finally, how are villagers benefiting from this project's measure of success?
Did it address an issue they felt it was important?
Development organizations typically use multiple measures of success
such as individual, institutional, and humanitarian.
However, the more ways success is measured,
the less time and resources can be put towards achieving each one.
There are two ways to frame these measures of success:
as outputs or as outcomes.
An output is a measure of the direct results of a project,
for example, the number of pumps built.
An outcome is a measure of the long-term impacts of a project
for example, the number of pumps still working after one year.
Outputs are easy to measure
often during or just after a project has been implemented.
Outcomes are more difficult and can require returning for follow-up,
sometimes years after a project has been implemented.
Outcomes are often measured after a period of time
too short to see if substainability was truly achieved.
I spent this past summer in Madagascar
studying rural water system sustainability.
Here I stand confounded
in a Malagasy village next to three broken water systems.
A water tower with an attached hand pump in the background,
and two gravity-driven pipe networks in front.
Each of these systems was built by a different international organization
at a different time, in the last 20 years.
Maybe each of these projects was successful,
based on how the organizations measured success.
But it's building rural water systems more important than keep them working?
Are outputs more important than outcomes?
Whether a development project succeeds
depends on how success is measured, and who measures it.
Many students and professionals in developed countries work
with international development projects.
Some for week-long service trips, and others, for life.
Before embarking, these individuals must determine their measure of success,
and how relates to that of the villagers.
imagine a world, where everyone working on a development project
has the same measure of success
as the poor villagers they are trying to help.
I believe this is the key to project sustainability,
because whether a project succeeds depends on the villagers' measure of success.
Thank you.
(Applause)