Susan Davis

By Susan Davis, Executive Director, Improve International

I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don’t work out, that’s when I’ve really learned. – Carole Burnett

I founded Improve International to help address the underlying causes that lead to the high failure rates for water systems and toilets in developing countries.  A big part of this should be charitable organizations and donors learning from past work, and evaluations of programs are one tool for this.  However, people need to be able to find the evaluation reports for them to be useful. I’ve assembled a list of organizations with independent evaluations as a start, but I’m more excited about the growing Knowledge Center on WASHFunders.org.  The Foundation Center built and manages WASHFunders.org; their expertise in knowledge management makes this a good home for evaluation reports and others related to water and sanitation programs.  You can search by key word or focus area. Improve International has been working with them to identify and summarize reports and there are many more to come.

Go forth and learn!