Susan Davis

By Susan Davis, Executive Director, Improve International

My dad used to say, as we would watch some politician or sport star apologizing for something on TV, “He’s not sorry he did it.  He’s sorry he got caught.”

I was reminded of this when I was with my friend Katie in the car.  We had passed a police car on the side of the road. She tapped the brakes and I laughed. “It’s such a gut response, isn’t it?”  She agreed with a smile and said her other instinct, oddly, is to turn down the radio.

There’s something about knowing you might get caught that makes you behave better (except on “reality” shows). As a young driver, I used to get a big speeding ticket each year. It only took about three $150 tickets for me to realize that it was a sort of tax on being stupid.  Now, on the rare occasions that I drive a car, I stick closer to the speed limit.  The presence of those nifty little cameras at stoplights helps me to make smarter decisions about what to do at yellow lights, too.

What if we always drove like there were police cars and cameras around?

There aren’t regulations that apply to effectiveness of water supply systems in developing countries.  Right now the customers (beneficiaries) of these systems and donors who support them must rely on the good intentions of organizations that build them. With failure rates remaining high, it’s obvious that good intentions don’t always result in sustainable projects.  Monitoring and evaluating a water project after it is finished is a form of self-regulation, but few implementing organizations perform these tasks well, if at all. Reasons include the difficulty and expense to visit remote communities with bad roads after project completion.

But would regulation be enough to make water projects last?  It would require some enforcement.  Sometimes regulation, or self-regulation, isn’t enough; you need peer pressure too.  For example, some people may not care very much about laws for child seats in cars and they may not believe they are important for child safety.  But maybe they use child seats to avoid embarrassment.  They do not want family or friends or even parking lot attendants to think they are bad parents. These drivers imagine people will want to stone you if you even THINK about driving around with your child in your lap.  (Even if you are trying to escape the paparazzi.)

Unlike the case of child seats, there is little pressure from peer organizations to perform well and there are few other types of incentives to achieve and verify effectiveness of water supply systems.  This may be one of the main reasons that some organizations and donors fail to monitor and evaluate water systems or even visit them regularly. The few donors who can afford to visit often see just the best projects.  I know; I remember the conversations with field staff when setting up a few of these visits.  This is understandable; it’s hard enough to raise money without having to explain why projects sometimes go bad, even if we can still learn from those.

But what if we designed each water or toilet project like anyone might pop by?  What if we knew a BBC reporter, our dads, our donors, or the donors’ great-great-grandkids might drive by the community and stop for a glass of water and a quick pee?

Of course, even if we do not expect anyone to visit, we should be most concerned about the opinions of the customers: the people who live in the community and need to use the water system and toilets every day, for generations.  They are the ones who will be the most sorry if we don’t get caught doing work that doesn’t last.