Strengthened organisational capacity to address WASH through gender equality approaches both at community levels and in WASH systems

What specific change happened? What types of change does the story illustrate (transformative processes and/or outcomes)? Consider positive and/or negative, as well as intended and/or unintended, direct and/or indirect outcomes brought about from your project.

In Timor-Leste, WaterAid’s project ‘Beyond Inclusion’ aims to create change towards ‘Gender Equality and Social Inclusion integration into effective national WASH systems’ (EOP Outcome 1) through collaboration with local women’s and other rights groups. These partnerships also contribute to achieving progress towards the EOP outcome 2  Women and men share roles and responsibilities in decision making in the household and at the community, with an emphasis on WASH’. In driving change towards both these outcomes, WaterAid is collaborating with local womens rights organisation, Feto Asaun ba Sustentabilidade ((FAS) Women Action for Sustainability).

Through this collaboration with FAS, over the past three years, the partnership is driving change at two levels:

1. FAS has strengthened organisational capacity to address WASH through gender equality approaches both at community levels and in WASH systems. A successful area of change is supporting female staff at FAS to build their facilitation skills, technical WASH expertise, and to strengthen their leadership and professional development through action learning and joint
2. Changes in gender roles and relationships in communities; this skill strengthening work has led to more quality gender approaches in communities, leading to a shift towards positive gender

In collaboration with WaterAid, FAS leads gender and social inclusion activities with rural communities in Manufahi as part of community-led total sanitation (CLTS) approaches. FAS conducts gender dialogue sessions, menstrual health awareness raising, disability rights sessions with communities.

Francisca Da Silva is a senior field staff at FAS, having worked there for the past eight years. In her role, Francisca coordinates a team of field staff, and is a lead facilitator of gender equality and menstrual hygiene management (MHM) sessions in rural communities and schools.

Fransisca reflected that through this supporting communities to address gendered division of labour throughout the CLTS process, she has observed in some households change and shared household tasks between men and women. “I feel the work can lead to a shift in mindset particularly among men”, and also that appropriate and rights-based language on disability terms are used more commonly in the community.

Fransisca is also proud of herself in her and her family transformation journey. When she is reflecting on her journey, she said that not only in the community, she observed the changes also happen in her household, for example her partner i took the responsibility of household tasks and looked after their children when she visited rural and remote communities.

Who is the target group benefiting from the change (e.g. women, people with disability, sexual and gender minorities, and other socially excluded group/s)?

Through building Francesca’s skills and expertise, and other staff like her, she is better equipped to facilitate quality sessions with communities, has a deeper understanding of approaches to shifting gender norms and facilitation skills to manage difficult conversations. Through her work, Fransisca is supporting rural women, men, people with disabilities, and households to benefit from the change.

Fransisca herself feels that she is also a positive role model to young people by doing her job. Francisca mentioned that she is often hearing, during the follow-up visits and session where the community is reflecting to the process that they had been through, on how now the household tasks are more evenly shared between men and women.

Who was involved in bringing about the change? Consider the role/s and relationship/s of actors directly and/or indirectly involved as well as those who may have enabled, facilitated, supported in some way as well as those who may have hindered or blocked change.

WaterAid values the role of FAS to deliver gender equality sessions and their role to facilitate and support the community on their disability and gender equality changes throughout CLTS. WaterAid supports FAS women team members to build their experience and skills through action learning approaches (also with other local rights partners). Most of the women staff at FAS who now lead the gender components of the rural WASH work, were part of the core team who designed the gender facilitation approach (funded through CS WASH II). Last year, the team at FAS were part of the core team who lead the review of the gender facilitation manual in collaboration with ISF-UTS. Francisca reflected that she is proud that she was part of this review. She had the opportunity to discuss with researchers; and to share a field practitioners’ perspective. Throughout these processes, FAS are also gaining various experience and knowledge on WASH issues and approaches.

What is causing the change? What relative role did your project play in bringing about the change? What other factors may have had an influence? Consider the interaction between your project and other factors in bringing about the change/s?

Francisca said that the trainings, field experience, and the exposures she had with various communities and researchers had helped her to build her skills, maturity and confidence. She believed that experienced and quality facilitation approaches are critical for communities to follow a gender transformation journey. She reflected that in her role, she regularly faced resistance and disagreement from the men’s group in the first session or meeting. Therefore, having maturity, lots of experience and strong knowledge are important skills for the facilitators.

Fransisca also highlighted that the close relationship with the community members is other critical aspect. The relationship is important for trust building, particularly to make community believe and confident with the facilitator during the sessions. She said that in some occasions the real information was not coming from the session but in informal conversations.

Fransisca also reported that it was important to have multiple visits for the same communities, and to space out the modules across different sessions. This helped her and her team to give time to community members to absorb and to progress on sessions. WaterAid recognises that it is critical to support communities through these changes slowly, to build in time to manage resistance, and to support the community facilitators to build their skills and professional development. Therefore, we build in time, action learning opportunities, reflective practice and appropriate budgeting to support organisations like FAS to conduct meaningful work and create change.

What is it specifically about this change you have identified that is especially significant for your project? How prevalent is this type of change in your project area; and how did you determine that prevalence?

Francisca said that the changes were observed at most of, if not all, the communities. She stated that in these communities, where the WASH burden is reduced, the equal or better sharing of household tasks are happening. The follow-up session of the gender module is capturing the summary of community changes and journey. Therefore, the synthesis of the record of this session from various communities will be useful to see the prevalence across communities.

How do you know that this change has occurred? Identify any evidence to demonstrate this change and any gaps or assumptions that you have made in determining the contribution of your project and activities.

In addition to the evidence we collected through the review by ISF-UTS, we also captured this evidence with FAS through the follow-up module or recording community members’ reflections. In the first period of 2021, we plan to facilitate assessment and analysis of monitoring data focusing on how women are managing additional roles, and whether or not men’s contribution is freeing up time for women to take on additional roles is required.