Success and Failure Factors in Community-based Development Projects

One of PEF’s development projects is a water and sanitation project for an upland cultural community, the Tbolis, in South Cotabato, Mindanao Island, in the Philippines.

Let us take a glimpse, a short vignette, of Tboli life after the project:

A small boy, aged nine or ten, cut a twig from a medium-sized tree with a rusty bolo. In a few seconds, he managed to fashion it into a pedal for his ageing bicycle that leaned on the wall of a shanty. There was visible glee in his eyes as he looked at the result of his ingenuity – the wooden pedal – before he took off his shirt to take a bath beside a communal tub nearby. After a hurried bath, he was astride his bicycle, speeding past other children and adults gathered for some conversation on a cold Tuesday morning.

Around the communal tub where the boy had taken a bath, some mothers were washing clothes. A few school children were fetching water while others were taking a bath, too. Water was flowing continuously; everyone could have his/her fill of one of nature’s life-giving elements. Because of the communal tub, the lack of clean water for households had ceased to be a problem for residents of Sitio Lamla, Barangay Kematu of the T’boli town in South Cotabato. [source]H. Marcos and C. Mordeno (2007). From Wells of Misfortune to Springs of Health and Hope: A case study of two community-operated water systems in the Municipality of T’boli, South Cotabato. Quezon City, Philippines: Peace and Equity Foundation.

What went right in this successful project?

Examining this project using the KPA lens shows that the Tboli community actually possesses, and used well for this project various forms of wealth (see the plus “+” items in blue boxes in Table 1): stakeholder and social capital, human capital, access rights to water, and technology and infrastructure.

Table 1
[View a larger version of the table]

From you own field experiences, what are the success factors, or what worked well, with anti-poverty projects?
What are the failure factors or what did not work well and why?