Projects

Water for Women Fund (DFAT)

FH Designs plays an important role in Water for Women, the Australian Government’s flagship WASH program that is being delivered as part of Australia's aid program, investing AUD110.6 million from 2018 to 2025. Overall implementation for DFAT is managed by a Fund Coordinator team, for which FH Designs provides the WASH Specialist and Gender & Social Inclusion Specialist.

WASH SDG Programme (Plan Netherlands)

Plan Netherlands is one of three consortium partners that implemented the Dutch funded €59 million WASH SDG Programme (2017-2023). Plan implemented programs in Indonesia, Nepal, Uganda, Ethiopia and Zambia and engaged FH Designs throughout to provide M&E expertise. In 2018 FH Designs supported Plan M&E staff in all five countries to design processes to collect, analyse and document baseline data. FH Designs subsequently conducted the mid-term review of the WASH SDG Programme in 2020, and then the endline evaluation in 2023.  

PNG-Australia Climate Partnership Design (DFAT)

In conjunction with our consortium partners Griffin and Aid-IT, FH Designs was engaged to manage the design the PNG-Australia Climate Partnership Program, in collaboration with the Governments of Australia and PNG.

PNG Rural WASH Sustainability Study (World Bank WSP)

FH Designs was contracted by the World Bank to undertake a study to examine the key factors affecting the sustainability of rural WASH investments. In a country with limited data on WASH sustainability, the study has proved to be a valuable resource to guide the WASH policy and implementation strategies developed for PNG.   The report produced for the study is available on the Resouces page.

Civil Society WASH Fund (DFAT)

DFAT’s CS WASH Fund was an A$103 million global program (2013 – 2018) that supported 13 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to implement 29 WASH projects in 19 countries across Africa, Asia and the Pacific. It was designed to emphasise engagement with the WASH enabling environment and enhance the sustainability of the fund’s impacts, as well as having a strong focus on the cross-cutting themes of gender, disability & social inclusion (GeDSI), environment, climate change and disaster risk reduction (ECD) as well as knowledge and learning (K&L). FH Designs provided the WASH Specialist to the three-person M&E panel (the 'MERP') established to provide oversight and guidance to the Fund's recipient CSOs, manage the data emanating from the activities and provide feedback to DFAT. The Fund's theory of change (ToC) developed by the MERP provided coherence to the process and allowed the fund to be used as a broad learning platform for the sector. A journal paper published after the Fund's conclusion provides further details (see Resources page).

ODF Sustainability Study (Plan International)

In 2012 Plan contracted FH Designs to conduct a study into the main factors affecting the sustainability of ODF status of households in villages triggered and certified ODF 2 or more years previously. Three research questions were defined as follows:

• What percentage of households have remained ODF?
• What are the primary causes of households reverting to OD?
• What motivated people to remain ODF?

The study was conducted in four countries in Africa - Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Sierra Leone - and took a two phased approach to data collection. The first phase re-verified approximately 5000 households in 116 villages across the four countries. The second phase focussed on around 1200 households in 72 villages that were purposively selected from the first phase. A latrine timeline tool was developed to elicit (without leading) the main factors affecting household decisions to keep or abandon their latrines. The study was finalised in December 2013, and was the first of its kind. Several other ODF Sustainability Studies were subsequently conducted using the same methodology. The final report is available in the Resources Page.

Mid-term Review of the SAWASI Program

FH Designs was engaged by DFAT in 2024 to conduct the mid-term review of the South-Asia Water and Sanitation Initiative (SAWASI) program, being implemented in India, Pakistan and Nepal.