Using cell phones to monitor and evaluate behaviour change through community health clubs in South Africa

Water and sanitation practitioners are challenged not only with developing interventions to enable the Millennium Development Goals to be reached, but also to show that their projects have achieved sustainable hygiene behaviour change. However, logistical limitations of existing data collection techniques have constrained the measurement of hygiene behaviour change. For over a decade the Community Health Club approach has proven that measuring behaviour change is feasible and can easily be performed through community-based monitoring. As the originator of this methodology, a South African based NGO is further refining an already robust monitoring and evaluation plan by using an innovative tool called the Mobile Researcher platform. This involves the use of cellular phones to conduct research and is proving an ideal tool for conducting community-based research in rural Africa, as demonstrated in the Integrated Water Resource Management project in South Africa.