The NEWAH participatory assessment - evaluating sustainability, gender & poverty issues

Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH) developed and piloted a Gender and Poverty (GAP) approach to address gender and caste inequity and poverty issues in its rural water supply and sanitation projects in Nepal. In order to assess whether women and the poorest benefited from the GAP approach a methodology tool which is participatory and gender and poverty sensitive was required. NEWAH chose the Methodology for Participatory Assessment (MPA) because of its participatory approach and its ability to analyse large amounts of data statistically. However, NEWAH found that the tool was too time consuming and did not meet all of NEWAH’s needs. The MPA was revised and modified for the Nepal context and renamed the NEWAH Participatory Assessment (NPA). This paper describes how this participatory methodology can be used to assess the sustainability of projects linked to gender and poverty sensitive issues. It also presents some of the findings from NEWAH’s experience of using the NPA.