Sustainability Planning and Monitoring

PARTICIPATORY TOOLS USED IN THE MPA6.6 Ladders (1)Women’s group assessing benefits of household latrines versus costs in CambodiaPurposeThe ladder activity is first used to assess the extentto which a water supply/sanitation programmeets the users’ demand and whether theyconsider the benefits worth their costs. The activityis done separately with women and men inwealthier and poor sections of the community.ProcessA discussion is started about how the service hasaffected people’s lives. Are there any benefits (ornegative effects) that they are experiencing fromthe service itself or from their participation in theprocess of its establishment or operation? As theyemerge, the benefits are listed on a flip chart sheetor separate cards using words along with symbols,pictures drawn by the community members, orreal objects to illustrate the benefits. Using symbolsor drawings is important to ensure that theilliterates are not excluded from the discussion.Once people feel that they have listed all thebenefits, they are invited to select those cards thatrepresent a demand currently being met by theservice, and lay aside the rest.The women or men then rate the degree to whichthey, as a group, are getting this particular benefit.They do this by giving each pictured benefit ascore of between ten (highest) and one (lowest)using beans or seeds as markers.Once the activity is completed, the cards are putinto a rank order from high scores to low. Thefacilitator helps to add up the total obtained scoreas compared to the total theoretical maximum (thenumber of identified benefits times ten). Theultimate score is a ratio arrived at by taking theaverage times ten. Thus, if the users identify thatthe service meets seven types of user demands,the maximum possible score would be 70. Sincenot all benefits will be rated a maximum of 10,the actual score may, for example, be 55. Thepercentage of satisfied demand is then 55/70 X100, or 79 percent. 2525 Use of a percentage score ensures that the final score is independent of the number of benefits identified, andonly measures the users’ perception of the extent of benefit expectation (or demand) being met.75