 Hi everyone, it's Charlie Tullick. I'm a Victorian AES Regional Committee member and really the facilitator for tonight's session on do-no-harm unintended consequences. Talking about the Water for Women Fund project. So, first I'd like to start by apologising today. So, I'm on Boothmore Arm Country in Victoria and I'd like to pay my respects to Elder's Past Present and Emerging. Tonight's session has a panel focus so you'll be hearing from several different speakers and I'll leave it to Stuart to really introduce the way that the session will operate. But I will hand over to Stuart Rates who's the monitoring, evaluation and learning manager for the Water for Women Fund. So, Stuart has 15 years of experience as a monitoring, evaluation and learning specialist in a range of sectors including resource management, climate change and community development across the Asia-Pacific region, holds a master's degree in social science, bachelor of arts, first class honours in sociology and a graduate certificate in evaluation and he's been an AES Victorian Committee member since 2018. So, I'll hand over to Stuart to lead today's session. Great, thank you Charlie. Yes, so as Charlie mentioned, our today's topic is on monitoring unintended consequences. So, we're going to approach this topic from a do-no-harm lens and yeah, so we're going to draw on our experience from the Water in Women Fund. So, I'll talk about the fund shortly but just before we get into that, I'm just going to introduce my fellow presenters today. So, we have Joanna Mott. So, Joyce is the Jesse advisor with the Water for Women Fund. I don't actually have your bio on hand here, Joyce. So, I might just run through everyone, yeah. I think that's fine, Stuart, yeah. Okay, yeah. So, yeah, Joyce is the Gender and Social Inclusion Advisor for the Water for Women Fund. We also have Heather Brown, who's an independent Gender and Social Inclusion consultant that is assisting with Jesse and monitoring and evaluation on the fund. We're going to hear from case studies from SNB, Bhutan, Lau and Nepal from Searing Chotan, who's joining us from Bhutan today. And Searing is a Gender and Social Inclusion Advisor with SNB. We're also going to hear from Pete Robertson from WaterAid Australia, who's going to present with Sharon Pondross on their work in WaterAid public beginning. Sorry. Okay. So, yeah, that's what we're going to cover today. So, just after this introduction, Joe Smart will provide an overview of Gender and Social Inclusion in the Water for Women Fund, followed by Heather, who's going to outline approaches to gender and social norms change and reinforce first why taking a do no harm approach is so important. Then I'm going to talk about monitoring approaches for unintended consequences using some sort of broader concepts and examples from the Water for Women Fund. Then we're going to look at some real life examples from projects. So, those projects that I mentioned from SNB, Nepal, Lau and Bhutan, and also WaterAid PNG. That's going to provide basis for some reflection and lessons that we can draw out from those case studies. And we're going to look at some examples. Okay. So, just a bit briefly about the Water for Women Fund. Yeah. The Fund is funding 15 countries. It is funding around 18 civil society organizations. Sorry, 15 civil society organizations are implementing 19 projects. It's being implemented over five years from 2018 to 2022. Ultimately, it's expecting to reach around nearly 3 million people across the Indo-Pacific region with water sanitation and hygiene projects. So, the aim of those projects is to improve the health, equality and well-being of Asian and Pacific communities. And there's also a research component to the Fund as well where there's 11 projects that are being funded in research organizations to support the uptake and use of knowledge and evidence within the water sanitation and hygiene sector and beyond. Okay. So, these are some of the organizations that we're working with in the Fund. So, you can see some Australian-based non-government organizations and not-for-profits, as well as some international organizations, NGOs and civil society organizations that we're working with as well as a range of universities. So, it is quite a broad Fund in terms of its reach and the range of organizations that we're working with. So, just briefly, yeah, so today's topic is about unintended consequences. We're going to get into that, but these are our intended outcomes and goals for the program. So, obviously, this is our sort of starting point. So, we've got four main outcomes that we're trying to achieve in water sanitation and hygiene in the Fund. The first outcome relates to system strengthening for water sanitation and hygiene. So, that's really about providing the enabling environment by government, civil society and the private sector to support inclusive and sustainable wash services. So, that, Lynn, provides the impetus there for the second outcome, which is about increasing access to water sanitation and hygiene services. So, this is a cool kind of outcome for us. It's all about providing accessible, inclusive and sustainable water and sanitation and hygiene. So, the third outcome, which we're going to focus largely on today, is about strengthening gender equality and social inclusion. And so, this is related to, I think, Joseph's going to get into this as well as Heather as well, and we'll hear from the real life examples from the projects. But it is about using water sanitation and hygiene as a mechanism for broader social and gender change. So, the fourth outcome there, as I mentioned before, is about strengthening use of knowledge and evidence within and beyond the wash sector. Okay. So, just to begin with, we're going to just define the term that we're using here. So, for unintended consequences, you might notice that it actually differs from the original posting of this seminar. So, we'd originally identified unexpected outcomes. So, that's, I guess, a term that we use in monitoring and evaluation quite often. But as part of putting together this seminar, we started to discuss it amongst ourselves as a team. And it's quite interesting to hear from sort of agenda advisors on why, when we take a do-know-how approach, we might actually use the term of unintended consequences. So, you can see here there's lots of other you know, words and terms that we could use. But I might just hand here to Searing. Searing, if you're there on the line, to provide us with a bit of background on why we're going to use the term unintended consequences. Yep. Thank you, Stuart. So, yeah, as Stuart mentioned, we were having a discussion amongst ourselves while we were preparing for this forum discussion. And I think we came to the conclusion that from a do-know-how lens, we actually like unintended consequences because it's more broad and inclusive, both in terms of the process and the results. And we also thought that the term outcome, it sounds a bit too technical and it loses out on the human aspects of our development work while consequence, it gives a more human touch results that we're aiming for. And also, using the term consequence, it makes us aware of the unintended harm that may result from our actions. Yep. So, back to you, Stuart. Yeah. So, we will use the term unintended consequences today, but yeah, there are a range of other terms there. And I think with that comes different perspectives and ways of looking at not only what we identify as unintended, but then how we might approach them and monitor them in our work. So, why monitor unintended consequences? And I think there's fairly broad agreement within the evaluation field today as well as within social programming that it's important. I mean, if you look at a lot of the policy debate around COVID, it's highly topical to talk about the unintended consequences of lockdown and all the sorts of measures that are going on at the moment. So, why should we monitor unintended consequences? And I think there's two main reasons when you look at some of the general type of literature on the subject. And the first one is that there's a normative reason. So, this is the moral and ethical dimension to this, that it's the right thing to do. So, if we're going to intervene in people's lives and environments, then we have a minimum responsibility to mitigate any negative or adverse effects that might arise from that. So, the other sort of more related practical pragmatic reason is that it actually just leads to better decision making for the program if we look at the broader effects of our work, not those only within the frame that are set up at the beginning of the design and programs. So, yeah, related to that, if we don't monitor the unintended consequences of our work, we run the risk of not capturing our achievements. So, this is something that funders are usually interested in, managers as well and people that are delivering programs. So, yeah, you do see it coming to the commissioning of evaluations too. However, when we're looking at unintended consequences, and Carol Weis made this point a long time ago, is that they often tend to be negative. And that's because when we're funding, designing, delivering, monitoring and evaluating programs, we do have a tendency to look for things that are working and for positive. Obviously, there's a lot of pressure on programs to deliver results as well. And I'm sure you're all well aware of that. So, it is something that can get left ignored, despite fairly broad recognition that it's something that we should all be doing. So, I think with all of that, that's why we would argue that taking do no harm approach is critical for monitoring and evaluating social programs. So, with that, I'm going to hand to my colleague, Jos, who's going to talk about do no harm within the Waterful Women Fund. Thanks, Stuart. Thanks, Stuart. And great to be here this afternoon and share with you a bit about Jesse on the Waterful Women Fund. I'm here to talk about it, particularly as it relates to do no harm, which Stuart and Serring have already given a very good lead in about. Basically, we recognise that gender and social inclusion is central to the fund recognising that sustainable, inclusive and accessible water sanitation and hygiene for all depends on equality and decision-making and equal decision-making participation, representation and leadership of women, men, people with disabilities and people from marginalised communities. As our fund partners will tell you and as you will see from the two case studies in today's presentation, supporting people to come from the margins to the centre and community and institutional decision-making requires consistent and intentional work at all levels, including at the personal and the organisational levels. Next one, thanks, Stuart. So this intentional work is outlined in the Funds Towards Transformation Strategy, which was a collaborative development by and for fund partners for their work in driving transformative practice and change in their wash programs. The Strategy outlines seven guiding principles, which you can see on this slide. Holding ourselves accountable, doing no harm, which is the focus for today's discussion. Understanding and challenging power and privilege, addressing inevitable resistance and backlash, thinking and acting holistically and placing the right people at the centre, which are obviously women, men, people with disabilities and from marginalised groups, and also pushing the boundaries of transformative practice. And also, if you would like to know a bit more about the strategy, you can find it on our website, a summary version, which the link will be provided at the end. But for the purpose of this, you can see that they're all interlinked and all are relating to do no harm. Thanks, Stuart. So do no harm. It's a core focus of the fund's work, which Stuart has already talked about. And so I just want to in this slide briefly step you through why. Power dynamics and social inequalities in every context means that the benefits of wash are not equally shared. So to ensure better quality of and access to wash services, women and the marginalised need to be supported for increased agency and voice and decisions that affect them and their communities. But in power of women and marginalised, and the marginalised can come at a cost, if we do not proactively address the backlash and the resistance and the potential harms involved in challenging and trench norms that support gender and social inequalities. So do no harm is very much about preempting and addressing the risks of harms in contextually appropriate ways. A key point to make here that Heather will be expanding on in her presentation is that doing nothing is actually doing harm. But just quickly, before we go on to the next slide, I'd like to outline just some of the intentional do no harm strategies that fund partners are employing. These include engaging male leaders in the wash sectors, partners of change or for change, working closely with rights-based organisations such as women's organisations, disability organisations, organisations working with the LGBTQI community and also organisations that have a focus on gender-based violence. They're also looking at considering the burden of care for women. So examples of that may be ranging from engaging men in discussions of household and wash work or targeting men in hand washing campaigns equally to women. An important one too, of which one of the case studies is about, is training staff on managing disclosure and referral of cases of violence and which we know is particularly important in the context of what has become known as the shadow pandemic of gender-based violence under COVID context. Thanks, Stuart. Now, before handing over to Heather, I'd like to briefly turn our attention to two tools that the fund has started to use for supporting reflective practice and qualitative data collection of which we see are two important ways for examining transformative change. I won't go into too much detail on the slide as it also features a PITS case study, but I just wanted to show it as a precursor to the next slide as this is how, this is a framework that we're using for actually scoring in our self-assessment tool that we've developed. So this is a snapshot of our self-assessment tool and which has been designed to support fund partners to reflect on their Jesse practice in their wash projects and in their organisations, which are obviously very interlinked. And as Stuart took you through the four fund outcomes, this tool focuses on the four fund outcomes plus an organisational component. So there are standards and criteria for each and this just shows you an example from outcome three, which is the outcome explicitly focused on gender and socially transformative change. So just to have a quick look through that as an example. Lastly, thanks, Stuart. The next, yeah, is stories of transformation. So this forms some of the qualitative data that we collect at fund level to examine how change is happening, particularly around practice and norms. So as you can see, it includes a range of guiding questions that are very much MSc inspired. And these questions help us to think through the change, whether the change is about a process or an outcome. If there's been any unintended consequences, be they negative or positive or both, how the change has happened, who was involved, who benefited and what evidence is there to demonstrate this change. And with that, I will hand over to Heather. Thank you very much. Thanks, Joe. Yes, we wanted to talk about gender norms in this in this discussion because it's one of the areas in the fund we're really thinking about. We're really thinking about, yeah, harm in terms of both challenging gender norms, which we know in good gender and social inclusion programs that we are challenging gender and social norms, and that we need to think about what the unintended consequences might be. And these are in two areas. They are in reinforcing unequal norms and also resistance to norms being challenged. So in the first point, you know, it's kind of what what Joe was saying within that spectrum of harmful practice through to transformative practice. When we don't look at norms, then you have the risk, you run the risk of reinforcing them. And within gender and social norms, it's how people are expected to behave in a society. And there are, I guess, sort of penalties for people who go against go against that. So yeah, so a risk of reinforcing norms. And in the wash context, that can look like, you know, focusing behavior change programs or, you know, focusing hand washing and hygiene on women and focusing sort of maintenance and anything with tools and leadership with men. So that's what we want to think about how to how to break out of those areas and push against them. So go the next slide. The challenge when you do push against norms, particularly gender norms, but we can look at all social norms, they, it does push against power and there can be reluctance to get power and then that does result in what we say resistance and backlash. It is a paradox, because if you are doing gender programming and social inclusion correctly, you are pushing against those norms and you will get resistance. So that is the paradox and why you have to really think about and plan for this resistance. And within the fund, within the trans towards transformation strategy, it talks about the expected resistance. So we expect this to happen. So I would say that, yeah, just an interesting and I see that there's some of my gender advisor colleagues on on the call today and anyone who works in gender or social inclusion knows this that a lot of our work is around around resistance. The resistance can take quite a passive form to just kind of not really doing what we say we're going to do or just kind of not showing up to workshops to quite serious backlash and increased violence against women, particularly in countries in the Pacific where we already have high prevalence and Pip is going to talk about some of the strategies around that. So I'll go to the next one please, Stuart. We're looking at two frameworks here for thinking about challenging norms. There are many, many frameworks. We're looking at these two because these are two commonly used frameworks. One is within sort of violence against women prevention and the other, the gender work framework is both an organizational change framework, but also a way to look at gender challenging gender norms and the both of these frameworks underpin the water for women theory of change. So if you look at the gender work framework, if we look at the bottom quadrant, there is sort of a mirror between the former rules and policies and the informal norms. And an example of this is, you know, in a lot of workplaces, we might have policies that encourage men to take leave when they have children and do flexible work. I mean, all flexible work is changed as a result of COVID, but where we encourage men to take leave, but it's not the norm and it's not practiced. So it's having to look at these two to do things at once, looking always at the formal, but then how it's also what the informal rules are. And they're quite hidden. So that's it. We just need to analyze those. Okay, we'll go to the next one please. And here's just a few kind of, there's a lot of learning in the fund. This area of norms change is quite, it's quite new in some areas or challenging norms. And I'd say particularly it's been interesting within the wash sector to really look at, yeah, how to challenge gender and social norms within a wash context. There has been a lot of reports of partners saying that they are experiencing real challenges in delivering norms change programs. And, you know, again, it's done to that paradox that thinks that you're actually on the right track if you are experiencing resistance. At the same time, when we see that, you know, we're running a very short program and norms are changing quickly, that's not likely. And so there's a lot of confusion about sort of what is knowledge, what is attitudes, what is practice and how to monitor changes in each of those areas, but it is quite a new area. And so we're working with, you know, throughout the fund on how to really articulate those different changes and how to monitor them. There is one other issue as well around data around challenging norms, particularly in terms of monitoring resistance can be both in M&E frameworks, but it can also come through in risk reporting, particularly if it's around cases of violence. So it needs kind of a holistic systems approach to really try to track where the different areas of resistance and actually some of that backlash is happening. And, yes, and I'll hand over to Stuart to talk more about the monitoring and evaluation aspects. I think Joe's covered these strategies before that we're using in the fund. Yes, so thanks Heather. Yeah, so from a monitoring and evaluation point of view, this is a real challenge for us on how we identify, track, respond to unintended consequences in the program. So there's lots of different sort of dimensions and reasons to that. We're not probably going to cover them all today. But just to say, I mean, we don't really have the answers. So this is something that we're exploring. And it's probably one of the motivators for this presentation today. So, but if we take starting point, going back to, you know, my preamble at the start, if we look at our intended outcomes alone, that actually won't tell us the full story of what's happening within our program. So, and there is a tendency, there's a, the pitfalls of performance measurements. So if we just track indicators alone, that's actually not going to always indicate as good indicators by the nature are actually quite reductive. So we will miss out on certain things. We do know that performance indicators cannot so obscure strategy as well. So by that, I mean, they can actually lead to adverse effects in themselves. And there's lots of examples of that. I mean, one possible example from our fund is we are tracking and paying attention to women's leadership that's been promoted through the fund. So we just solely look at women's leadership within ignoring or perhaps missing the familial or the social, the community institutional dimensions of what that might entail. So yeah, I guess that's, that's an example of a good indicator, but then it's just got to be put within a social context. So we're not for a minute saying that we shouldn't monitor intended outcomes. Let me make that clear. So our whole measurement system, our program is guided by intended outcomes. It's what motivates us. Our wash indicators, so for worse sanitation and hygiene that I mentioned before, they feed up directly into the sustainable development goals for water and sanitation. So similarly with our gender equality, this is what, these are the overarching vision for the fund. So we would argue though that our intended outcomes in themselves aren't quite enough. So they're necessary but not sufficient. So when we look at the DAT criteria, this is, I guess, something I've learned from other evaluators taking an impact evaluation approach. So looking at the difference that we're actually making through our programming does give us, I guess, the framework of looking at unintended outcomes. And this is something that we're encouraging our projects to do at the moment through their midterm reviews. And I find it, it's a nice little thing for them to focus on beyond the bigger, broader or hardcore questions that you need to look at with impact. It's something that they can hang on to now. And it has to have a very real consequence for their programming. So anticipating unintended consequences. And I think this is going to be really brought to life by the case studies. So I don't want to talk for too long on this, but in the evaluation world, so when we look at what the guidance is basically, Patricia Rogers says, we need to look at negative theories of change. So we need to look at, okay, when we look at the expected outcomes that we're seeking to achieve, we need to flip that, we need to put on the black hat and look at then, okay, what about when things don't go to plan? What are perhaps some negative consequences that might occur as a result of our work? She also says that we need to explore competing theories and perspectives. So by that, when we've got a bunch of people in a room sitting around, coming up with programs that does, there's usually dominant ways of looking at how things should work. So we need to look at, look a bit more broadly, I think, if we're going to start to consider unintended consequences in our programming. So one, I guess, very current way to do that is to use systems thinking to explore the interactions that occur through programs. So obviously, programs aren't delivered in vacuums. When we do something, when we intervene in a system, that then has a knock on effect on other parts of the system. So we might start to explore what some of those knock on or ripple effects might be. At a very basic level as well, when we're delivering a program or that's new or emerging or developing, we may not have a very good understanding of what the through change might be. So by identifying and monitoring unintended consequences, it can actually help us build and develop our theory as we go. Okay, so just some general approaches for monitoring and evaluating unintended consequences. So obviously, taking a localised approach that is actually responsive and adaptive, having monitoring systems that are actually built and led by the people that are affected and delivering programs is a key way that we can be responsive to those changes that are occurring in our programming. So Irene Goit talks about seeking surprise in her thesis from over 10 years ago. And I think that's really, really cool. And that's something that we've taken and sort of, well, we've started to embed that within our stories of transformation to actually prompt our projects to look for things that are coming out. They didn't actually expect that we're surprising for them. So we can do this by looking to explore within our monitoring systems, in addition to explaining, just I guess the more traditional approach to indicator measurement and our evaluation. Some common methods that are sort of suggested for unintended consequences, you see most significant change come up a lot, obviously. So I bet this is a narrative storytelling technique that's very qualitative and asking people why is that significant. So that's is often mentioned. As Joe's mentioned, that's in some of our own narrative monitoring too. So just more, you know, MSc does take a, I guess, an unstructured approach to interviewing. So I think other unstructured approaches like observation, basically, if you use interviewing for a, as an example, I think giving participants time and room to, and space to formulate their own responses. So not asking leading questions and that sort of thing. Outcome harvesting is also an approach that's being suggested. So canvassing broad range of changes that might be occurring within a program, identifying specific things and then working back from those sorts of changes to look at how, what sorts of mechanisms might have brought about those changes that we're observing and then linking them back to the program strategies. So wide sampling, snowballing, not just working from the same list of usual suspects or key informants with our lists of people that we're going out to. And snowballing is a way where we can do that, where we can work from a list and then look to expand that out through networks. And then finally, in analysis, taking an inductive approach. So rather than having a predetermined set of code that we're looking at within our data, actually take looking, looking at the data in its own right and then seeking to, yeah, seeing, seeing what emerges from, from that data. Okay, so that's my general more conceptual approach to some of these, this issue of unintended consequences. So now we're actually going to hear from our projects. And yeah, this is exciting. So we can actually bring some of this to life. So first I'm going to hand to Sarah Chauden from SNV. And she's going to talk about her work in Bhutan, Laos and Nepal. And following that we'll hear from Pip Robertson from Border Aid, who will present on their work in Papua New Guinea on behalf of Sharon Pondross. Okay. Thank you, Sarah. So good afternoon. So today, as Stuart mentioned, I'm sharing SNV's experience in planning for and monitoring unintended consequences in the Water for Women Supported Project Areas in Bhutan, Laos and Nepal. So in this regional project, we are applying SNV's performance monitoring guidelines that monitor environmental safeguards and unintended negative consequences for marginalized groups in the context that we work in. Next slide, please. So to give you a little context, SNV's Water Sanitation and Hygiene, in short, I'll just say Wash. So SNV's Wash program approach is built on the program approach. Sustainable Development Goal 6 to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all can only be realized when the human right to water and sanitation of people is fulfilled. And our approach recognizes the local governments in their jurisdictions as the duty barriers. So we focus in strengthening water systems through our capacity strengthening activities for everyone involved in the delivery and use of water services. So these may be government officials at the national or local levels. It could be private sector players, civil society organizations and community leaders and also users themselves. In addition, our programs are designed to ensure that water services are environmentally and financially sustainable. So far, our rural water services has been implemented across 19 countries in Asia and Africa. Next slide, please. It is critical to understand that wash programming can unintentionally harm people that are already discriminated against due to their gender, sexuality, disability, mental health, or other forms of potential disadvantage. And this is in addition to the potential harm of poorly designed, conceived infrastructure that we may typically think of in wash. The risk of harm is heightened when wash programming seeks to redress deeply entrenched in harmful norms and practices such as gender roles in wash. So these actions, while good in their intent, backlash and violence as I mentioned, directed at the very people the project intends to support. So understanding and mitigating what these potential risks are is critical to realize inclusive development and social changes that everybody. To mitigate risks across three project areas, we integrated the Dunoham principles in our program design in 2018. And since that time together with our partners, we have been iteratively strengthening our Dunoham approach in programming Dunoham experts and carrying out on trainings for our partners and engaging in a Dunoham self-assessment tool. So SMD's Dunoham approach in wash programming, it's motivated by three objectives. So these are number one, to increase in these institutional commitment and capacity to integrate a Dunoham approach. Number two, to understand context specific causes of disadvantage and modify programming and practices to reduce harm and promote gender and social inclusion. And thirdly, to build monitoring and accountability mechanisms to capture unintentional negative impacts of programming and for continued learning and adaptation. Next slide please. So led by SMD and Bhutan, our Water Fogman funded projects in the three countries of Nepal and Bhutan are contributing to deepening government and CSO commitment to inclusive development and making this actionable. So together we're setting up a context-appropriate environmental safeguards to leave no one behind and ensure that water sanitation and hygiene is accessible for all. Next please. So to illustrate SMD's programming starts with the collection analysis and use of desegregated data by gender, wealth and disability to inform the design of sanitation and hygiene impact indicators. Number crunching is complemented by formative research, formative qualitative research to understand the why and to help us devise the how to meet our objectives in a safe manner. To determine the capacity of the government, CSOs and private sector deliver environmentally safe and sustainable and inclusive sanitation and hygiene we carry out capacity assessments. Findings of these capacity assessments in turn identify those areas where capacity will need to be strengthened. So these foundational exercises are the areas for improvement. So this included the need to organize Dunoham training courses for the project teams and national stakeholders. But before carrying out training courses ourselves, we too at SMD needed to discern how we were faring in our Dunoham approaches. So from the onset and applied our Dunoham self-assessment tool internally to assess our internal policies and organizational functioning. When we were ready to share our lessons, we started conducting trainings for our partners. So during these trainings, we collectively identified the risk of sexual, psychological, social, cultural and physical violence, particularly for people who may be marginalized due to their gender, sexuality, disability or mental health. And then these teams later became prominent themes in our program. To strengthen our existing gender and social inclusion trainings, the Bhutan and Laos project teams integrated Dunoham concepts and facilitated the greater participation of marginalized people in program designs and implementation by forming strategic partnerships with local right-holder groups. So such efforts have led to the visible inclusion of long-marginized identities in decision-making processes. Like for example, in Bhutan, the project team supported the active participation of disability champions during the regional wash multi-stakeholder forum by collaborating with local DPOs and also investing in preparation sessions to strengthen their engagement and voice in the wash workshops. So from these efforts, two disability champions, a woman and a man, they've emerged and their active participation resulted in the signing of the resolution to ensure that the next national wash stakeholder meeting venue will be accessible for people with disabilities. We also wanted to make ourselves and our partners in decision-making and planning for inclusive wash program. So in Bhutan and Laos, we've developed the Dunoham self-assessment tool that I mentioned earlier, which is now being utilized to measure progress and to inform program adaptation as needed. So the self-assessment is undertaken every six months. It provides teams with the opportunity to reflect on the implementation of our Dunoham commitment to assess progress and to identify where direct improvements need to be made. So part of the intended assessment process in local country management teams committing to the process and signing and also endorsing the goals and next steps in our formal meeting process. So for some of our program initiatives, especially at the central levels, we've also reached out to the sexual and gender minority community through their own networks. Next slide please. So in terms of lessons and reflections, our Dunoham experience have until now highlighted the importance to strengthen risk assessments in programming applied, integrating actions that promote participation and inclusion of people who may be marginalized. So understanding the complex realities of people's lives, especially power relations in any given local context is crucial to ensure that wash services do not leave anyone and so is the understanding that the right people to talk to at the right time and also using appropriate and effective methods and approaches. Additionally, we realize that we need to continue to strengthen government capacity to design, implement, monitor and be accountable for evidence-based and targeted wash programs. So these initiatives, they need to be accompanied by long-term and invested empowering initiatives with the most marginalized, like for example, people with disabilities and their households through the development of respectful engagement approaches and decision-making or designing wash interventions. We believe that the continuous application of the Dunoham approach with aligned actions to improve practice will deliver incremental improvements in ways that sustain good organizational and professional practice and enables lasting change with benefits for next slide please. So lastly, if you're interested to learn more about SMV's Dunoham work, please refer to the learning briefs that we've developed so far that's available on our website. Thank you so much for your attention and with that I'll hand over to Pip. Fantastic, thank you so much, Saring. It was really interesting to hear the work that you've been leading and I think it flows in really well to taking a close look at some of the work that we've been doing in Wewack. So my name's Pip Robertson. I'm the Equality and Inclusion Officer at Water Raid Australia, so based here in Melbourne and I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which I'm on. I'm working from home at the moment and I'm in the northern suburbs of Melbourne on the land of the Wurundjeri and Wurwurung people of the Kuala Nation and on behalf of Water Raid I'd like to pay respect to elders past, present and emerging. I think acknowledging traditional owners is really important in Water Raid's commitment to reconciliation and also when we're having a conversation like this about do no harm I think that's really pertinent. So as Stuart said I'm based in Melbourne and I've got my colleague Sharon Pondros who is the Gender Equality Disability and Social Inclusion Officer who's based in the Wewack office in P&G. Sharon has really been the driving force behind all of this work and I really want to acknowledge the incredible work that she's put into this and the way that she's led this integration of family violence referral pathways with that partner and unfortunately she was going to be presenting tonight but she's not been able to join us so you have me instead but hopefully I'll be able to bring through some of her insights and reflections this evening. So Water Raid is a wash organisation working that everybody has good quality and safe water sanitation and hygiene so everyone everywhere and then speaking about our Water for Women program the Water for Women program is really focused on inclusive wash for the Wewack, Wewack region in the East Sepic province so as you can see there it's quite a regional area in Papua New Guinea so as part of the inclusive wash program we're looking at reaching over 40,000 people and the real focus being on inclusive equitable water sanitation hygiene services taking that sector strengthening approach that Stuart was talking about earlier with a really strong focus on the empowerment of women and people with disabilities through the creation participation support engagement of those groups in wash service delivery and leadership roles so as the third point says lots of partnership work we've got amazing partners with the East Sepic Council of Women and also with the East Sepic Disability People's Organization. We just popped to the next slide so today I'm going to be talking about our do no harm approach in this programming and however applied it to our COVID-19 response and I'm sure that everybody can see or feel the way in which COVID has really hit women and girls really hard and that wash is more important now than ever because so many of those key prevention behaviors rely on wash that having access to water and soap as that prevention measure but for only 37% of the population in Wewack only 30% of 37% have access to basic drinking water or their water supply is unreliable or that they're not able to get as much water as they need and that's been a real barrier and the other piece being that during COVID with I think research widely has shown that it's had a major burden for women because many women are locked out of decision making so their needs aren't being met that women have had a lot of increased labor particularly for women in Wewack with wash labor and also increase increasing of violence against women and girls so when we look at our do no harm approach for water aid it's been a real journey a real transformation journey for us as an organization and that's what underpins the work that we're doing now so it's been that gender framework which is where our do no harm principles come from and also undertaking a gender order safeguarding review training that's really underpinned our programming work so when we talk about do no harm we're talking about ensuring that our work isn't directly causing harm and as Heather was talking about also that we're not reinforcing negative harmful social norms and stereotypes so that's really where the work that Sharon has been leading in the PNG team comes through today so when COVID hit we had to react really quickly and it was and government came to us wanting to partner with water aid the partnerships that we have to be able to respond and there's some key pieces that we'd already done as part of our Water for Women programming that really underpinned our ability to respond quick quickly so a key component of that was the analysis and research that we undertaken as part of that baseline so understanding the experiences and needs of women girls people with disabilities and that was undertaken through the National Research Institute to understand what what marginalized communities were experiencing in terms of their wash needs and in terms of the social norms that were a barrier to both equality and wash and they highlighted similar things around being locked out of leadership not having their needs met not having their voices heard and experiencing gender-based violence when they're trying to access wash services and as well as carrying a really big burden around um around wash collecting water washing clothes um being the person that needs to get the drinking water for the family so that really heavy wash burden the other thing that we know is that PNG has very high rates of violence so two-thirds of women over the age of 15 have experienced violence in a relationship and that the social norms that go with that so this data is coming from the census the PNG census that 70% of women and 72% of men agreed that violence was acceptable in certain circumstances the other really crucial information was that women who experience violence very few tell anybody or are able to access help so that information really underpinned the approach to our programming and particularly our rapid response to COVID-19 the other essential part is partnerships for us so we work with ECIPIC council of women that are a network of 20,000 amazing women across across the district and they also deliver family violence services so in terms of how do we take the do no harm approach and how did we use that for our COVID work so as I mentioned our government partners came to us wanting to respond to COVID and be doing that prevention and so when we were thinking about what is the best practice that we know about wash and COVID prevention we were thinking about two key elements so that we knew that the essential pieces of hand washing social distancing cofeticate and thinking about when we apply gender lens what does that look like and again how do we ensure that with those elements we're not reinforcing gender norms and one of the really key things that's come up through COVID is that with social distancing it's a really common tactic that underpins family violence so isolating a victim is a key part of what the perpetrator will usually do when they're using violence against a woman or usually a woman and so what does that mean when we're going out and we're promoting hand hygiene social distancing when we apply that gender lens what does that mean and how do we apply the do no harm approach how do we mitigate some of the risks that come with that and it was through those partnerships that it was really clear what some of the needs were so really talking with SKL council of women it was really clear what some of the needs coming out from community were and the very strong concern around family violence that came through very very clearly which is why this piece of work has come up Stuart can you go to the next slide for me please so you can see there those critical pieces that I was talking about and there's an SKL member Florence and next slide please Stuart so then talking about the COVID prevention work so how we put this into action so Waterade worked with the the district government in mobilizing six teams to go out and undertake COVID prevention response work so as part of that we worked with our partners we worked with SKL to develop some key gender equality messaging and also to include some messaging around family violence referral pathways so if you look on the right there you can see a poster which was co-designed with SKL and women about what are the key messages that they wanted to be sharing with other women to enable other women to be getting help but also the messaging about working together about reinforcing positive social norms that men and women can work together they can create safer communities that with these prevention measures that there are ways to protect the community and be safe together so this is often called the harmonious communities poster looking at ways to reinforce positive social norms so with the mixture of positive gender equality messaging the poster which includes all the referral hotlines for COVID and family violence and the SKL members delivered some quick fire support to these government units that were going out as well as SKL members attending so they went out for weeks at a time delivering these messages in communities so the slide before you saw Florence doing exactly that so that contextual local partners delivering messaging within their communities about how to seek support if they needed it but also reinforcing positive gender norms about sharing household work sharing labour how to use nonviolent norms to resolve stress and conflict the other piece that we did was develop a trainer trainer and that was used by 180 government staff it's a five-day trainer trainer that was supported by the World Health Organization in PNG and throughout that manual it is based in scenarios that unpack the gender elements of COVID of the wash behaviour also talks about the risks of family violence and how people could provide a safe referral so whilst WaterAid wasn't able to go out and do all of this work ourselves taking that system strengthening approach we could share some strategies that people could do but also try and minimise the risks so really focusing on applying the gender lens and understanding that some of those preventative measures can have implications and how to speak to communities about that making sure that they understood the services that were available and then also being confident to speak about family violence in a culturally appropriate way delivered by people from that community so we did some monitoring on this as well so this is a little bit different to our standard programming where we would have really long-running relationships in communities because this was supporting government to go out into other communities it was it's been more difficult than if you're working in a community for an extended period where you could go back and speak with people but we were able to do some monitoring by talking to teams who delivered the messaging and they said that the impact was really positive that women spoke out during these wash sessions where we're talking about prevention measures or we're talking about wash and women women really speaking out passionately and saying yes that's so true like we're doing all this work and we'd love support and then starting those community conversations and also women reporting that they felt really supported by having organizations talk about women's rights and speaking about family violence not being an appropriate way to resolve conflict or that family violence isn't appropriate and it is against women's human rights so we had really positive feedback from women talking to escrow through communities we had reflection sessions with government staff afterwards and we also had some data come in from escrow about the referral pathways when they were doing family violence intakes and that they had quite a few sort of over 30 referrals from women saying we attended one of your sessions and that's how we got the number and and seeking out family violence support so we can already see what some of some of the impact is so just to finish I hope that I've been able to bring some of that work to life about how we've approached that and really highlighted the key learnings or the the key essential elements around working with rights groups partners that have that local context and knowledge ensuring ensuring that there are when you're doing gender equality or family violence work that the services are available if there aren't any services you're potentially putting people at really high risk of experiencing violence and not being able to access services that's really critical and also supporting staff to be able to speak about it having those skills about how to manage your referral so we're going to be progressing this family violence work in our longer term programming with communities that we're working with more longer term in terms of improving water sources community engagement women's leadership and water committees so this work will continue but I hope that gives you a snapshot as to how we integrated that work into the COVID response I think it's been really meaningful and it's it's really been led by the WeWAC team and by our partners and I know that they're really proud of it so thanks thank you Pip and also Sering that was wonderful to hear your project examples of do no harm in practice okay so now just some raw from the fund and also drawing on the projects too Sering, Jos, Heather, please chime in you can probably do this much better justice than I can so just some sort of takeaways from for us really in exploring this topic so really identifying considering exploring and addressing gender and gender and social norms in our programming is critical and I think the project examples have highlighted how that is something that is an ongoing process but it's something that needs to be addressed head on at the design stage and Sering's example of the formative research that was done that then brought the basis for then the ongoing programming and similarly I think with Pip's examples of doing needs assessment in WeWAC yeah it's really great examples of how gender analysis can provide the basis for the for the programming from a yeah male perspective yeah really I mean you see this in the programming too taking a really adaptive contextually appropriate responsive approach so really having locally led, locally driven implementation and then building and monitoring systems around that is key I think if we're going to anticipate and respond to things that are coming out of our interventions so one fun level reflection I guess that we've had we just had a whole review of the whole fund undertaken and it based one of the findings was that I think that we can do better in terms of bringing our results into back into the practice and the implementation of our fund and that's not that's not an issue that we have alone for our fund I think adaptive management adaptive programming is a challenge for the entire you know for most programs so really yeah again trying to embed those yeah those cycles between planning reflecting and then feeding you know and doing into our programming yeah so another reflection is to monitor process as well as outcomes so this this came out of yeah early discussions as Sering mentioned at the beginning I think it's also really well highlighted by those examples so in the PNG water aid project we we need to look at all the similarly with the SNB projects we need ways of monitoring the processes of our information implementation too if we just wait for the results to emerge that may be too late and that in itself can present risks for the people that we're working with particularly when we're talking about working with marginalized people which aren't which may not be represented in our data in the first place if we're talking about hidden or vulnerable groups this is probably even yeah heightened in a COVID context where you've got social stigma um so we're talking um yeah it really does just read in the force I think for both dual processes monitoring process and outcome as well um one thing yes please jace yeah yeah no no I just wanted to emphasize I think what you highlighted there is really important and and key to that that um inclusive process is ensuring inclusive processes is around that that and PIP and both PIP and Sering talked about this a lot around the engagement and the work done with um rights-based organizations and you know that that that really strong work to ensure that those processes are inclusive um so I think yeah that that was a key thing that came out for me from the two case studies yep thanks jose so yeah a challenge that we found for our fund again it's not limited to our project um is yeah the risk of positive bias um in not only identifying our results but then um yeah the processes of selecting and reporting and communicating as well um we had roughly 25 stories of transformation that came in um from projects earlier this year and I think nearly all of them were um positive um and so that's why it does reinforce the need for um qualitative qualitative narrative storytelling techniques like most significant change to be part of a broader um measurement system that includes mixed methods so where we can um track and report on our known indicators and then explore other emerging things too as well and obviously that needs to happen within a context a fun context where we're supporting um learning to an improvement so I don't feel like I've done justice to the the richness of those case studies at all um so hopefully we can probably draw some of that in discussion hopefully we've still got some time um I might just hand over to Heather and jose now who've actually who've got some um tools and resources that they could share with you on do no harm sure um I'll just start yeah in Ed back and you know when we're talking about resistance and the different forms of resistance from sort of you know more passive resistance to more um you know sort of um backlash and and um stronger resistance there's a really good tool by VicHealth which actually goes through the different forms of resistance and different strategies needed to address them so that's just a toolkit that I think is really helpful in terms of not only strategies but I think once you work the strategies you work through that mitigation and how how you might apply that in a program setting um International Women's Development Agency has developed a really interesting uh do no harm toolkit that was based on I would I don't know a couple years of like really in depth research looking at um women's economic empowerment and some of the unintended consequences around women having greater access to um to financial resources both in actually having access to cash but also that I guess changes in dynamics at the household level and it's a really great um very um intuitive kind of toolkit um I don't know Jos did you want to talk about that in the fund how it's been used yeah oh I can just quickly uh just a quick word on that that yeah that was um that we uh applied that do no harm toolkit toolkit in a pilot that we did with one of our partners Habitat for Humanity in PG um to yeah it was a pilot that involved uh working with the staff on um key concepts around violence against women and and how that impacts on um their ability capacity to participate and how that would affect the the barriers to that would affect their participation and wash processes when the staff go to the communities to to to develop wash plans um collaboratively with the communities and so it involved a process of sensitizing staff to those issues in Habitat and also uh supporting them to apply some of the um the tools in the do no harm toolkit um integrating them into their wash planning processes with the community uh so yes there is a learning brief that you can um you can find on that on on the website if you're interested yeah I second what Heather's saying it's a really great great tool very clear and um based on really strong research as as um Heather raised um there's another one which is it's got it's it's quite a a fend for but it's a gbd monitoring for non-gb programs basically so it looks at how to um mitigate gender-based violence um issues around um any kind of programming so it's been it can be used in wash it can be used in women's economic empowerment and it goes through some of the systems that you know and processes that I think that hip was discussing in how watery it approached it is you know what are all the gender quality kind of implications what are the norms and then getting down to what are women's rights organizations whatever referral pathways those kinds of things so it's quite a step by step again another really um you know good good resource um and the final one is one I just came across in the past couple of weeks and you know as we said this norms area is still quite um you know it's quite new and there's a platform that's run by odi um out of the uk which is all about you know resources around norms change and around I guess different frameworks and thinking and and um you know behavioral insights and you know it's just it's a huge area but this is a really good um kind of website that looks not just at emini but just I guess all the broader norms change kind of work joseph did you want to say yeah I can just quickly yeah thanks um Stuart yeah so this this is just to show some of the links um for on on the water filming website which also takes you to if you go to the second link takes you to the gender and social inclusion page and there's also the publications page these include or many of the resources that um fund partners have developed through their water filming projects and also includes a number of learning briefs uh the smv ones which sarin was referring to and also some some other learning briefs also um from the fund around do no harm uh disability inclusion in COVID wash responses and also um inclusion of sexual and gender minorities in in COVID wash responses as well and that's also where you find the the do no harm uh learning brief uh from the fiji pilot as well and there's a few other things there too if you're interested yeah thank you okay thank you that's the end of our presentation so on behalf of the fund thank you and I might hand to charlie now do we have any time for um any questions yeah thanks to you we do uh so just put out a call in the chat for any questions otherwise if anyone would like to directly jump on unmute yourself and ask a follow-up question we can can do that um thank you everyone for presenting it was really interesting it's very different work in that context for many of us as evaluators working here just in Australia so really interesting to see this international collaboration taking place and for my reflection on all of this um the do no harm language has I guess somewhat been used in the evaluation circles where as evaluators we aim for our work to do no harm so our aim in coming in and evaluating any intervention is to not make things worse and to conduct ourselves ethically and it seems in this case that we've just looked at on the various projects and case studies here that it's become an implementation approach to program delivery as much as just to just evaluation um so I guess maybe the maybe my question to link it to a question is um is this a normal way of operating that you've come across before or is it normal in your sector to have a do no harm framework or is that something relatively relatively new for you I think yeah I think Charlie that's um yeah that's that's a really good question and I think it it it's it's not um relatively new in terms of uh the humanitarian context uh where the idea was to to be able to um identify you know to ensure that you're not um I think um he described it well saying you're not reinforcing um or not causing harm in the interventions that you do but I think it is probably and correct me if I'm wrong others but it's emerging in the practice of um really focusing on gender and social norms and and addressing them in in safe ways recognizing that they do you know they are major contributors to inequalities and so being able to address those um is really important but addressing them in safe ways that um that don't cause harm and being able to identify those from the outset is is is key and I think that's this is an emerging area and um under the fund there's been you know this is a big this is one of the priority areas that that um some partners are working on and we're sharing and collaborating across the fund on that um but others may have um may have a different point of view around that I mean it's it's a question perhaps for for those um that have joined us there are other sectors um that approach obviously we've got our own um yeah experience with this I think paper might be um you know I can see there's some questions here to talk about if it's being you know um use this kind of approach has been used much in Australia and I just know that I don't mean to put you on the spot but I know that you know previous to working in international development you you're involved in in the Australian sector and if you have any comments on on on how it's approached and other you know outside of international development thanks Heather yeah I was just trying to think of some examples and um I have worked a lot in the Victorian sector at women's organizations and I think that I did see do no harm approaches being used particularly around prevention of violence against women and gender equality work um because it is around those social norms and thinking and not wanting to be reinforcing negative social norms in the work that we're doing so it may not have always been called do no harm um or unintended consequences but I think that type of approach was definitely being used in a programmatic sense um and certainly whenever we're talking about family violence we talk about risk and mitigating risk and making sure that we're not increasing risk or potential um harm or trauma when we're particularly when you're working with survivors um of family violence or um doing any type of work like I think say I've worked on a technology project called Ask Izzy which is around connecting um people experiencing family violence with um services and a huge part of that was around how do we mitigate the risk of potential harm with technology and abuse so I think my reflection would be definitely happening but I'm just not sure if it's called or referred to in the same way but I'd be really interested to hear from other people um if if they've seen those kind of strategies. All right it's really interesting and that probably that adds up on another question around whether this method's being used in non-development or Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander program evaluation um it's probably a live question did anyone have a comment in response to either the seminar as a whole or the specific element of it or that topic just discussed was we only have a short amount of time maybe just one more question or so there's a comment in the chat area about from Jillian around working in the recovery program space and um did you want to talk to that comment quickly Jillian or leave others to have a read or leave that as a comment. Stu did you want to close off with any other follow-up questions or um or finishing statements? Not just to say that um we're on a journey with this too we're still learning um obviously um and that's why we started to you know come and talk to you today about it so um if you'd like to discuss it further if you have any ideas if you'd like any information um please get in touch we will circulate the um the presentation um and that'll um have our details attached in it too. Yep all right excellent well on behalf of the Victorian branch of the AES thank you all very much for dialing in including from abroad it's been great to hear this case example and um learn about projects on the ground and the ways that behaviour change can be taken forward through implementation and evaluation and um and good luck with the future work in this space and uh hopefully everyone can join us next month uh for another seminar which will be about evaluation careers and all your various careers options in the profession so it should be an interesting way to end the year thinking about different opportunities that evaluators can progress and take steps into. So thanks everyone for dialing in and thanks thanks Stu and team for presenting so well today. Thanks Charlie thanks everyone. Thanks so much everyone. Thanks everyone.