Community Managed Project (CMP) in mplementing rural water supply in Amhara Region, Ethiopia

The rural water supply in Ethiopia has experienced significant changes over few years with the implementation of Community Managed Project (CMP) approach by RWSEP supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland which has shown the good result of improving the living condition of the rural population. CMP approach is now becoming a very successful approach for community initiation, implementation and management of water supply and sanitation activities. The beneficiaries take the sole responsibility in the construction; operational management of the water point planned and is also accountable for management of funds required for implementation by itself. The principle objective of this research was to enhance the achievement of Universal Access Plan and sustained functioning of built WSS facilities. Furthermore, this research also focused on to examine the existing rural water scenario in Amhara region of Ethiopia, to determine the nature and level of community participation in rural water supply and to analyze whether community managed projects are more efficient to meet demand of rural communities. The methodology followed both qualitative and quantitative analysis methods; the research central to the community participation and CMP approach. The tools such as desk study, questionnaire survey and semi-structured interview were used to get a wide view of actual conditions and experiences. The main method of the study was SWOT analysis to build on strengths, eliminate weakness, exploit opportunities and mitigate the effects of threats of CMP approach. The field survey showed that there was high level of community participation in CMP approach. All members of the communities were beneficiaries and part of the improvement of the water, sanitation and hygiene conditions in their localities. The communities had ownership feeling for water schemes since they themselves are responsible for entire process of improving their water supply service. The communities are represented by WASHCOs formed in each of them. The water officers provide training. After training, communities were fully responsible to water schemes from pre-construction to post-construction and had to make commitment for the future operational management where the certain amount of funds are was collected before construction of water schemes through micro-finance named ACSI. The effectiveness of CMP approach was seen higher than other direct fund approach since in CMP approach there is high utilization of allocated funds, short construction time and most importantly the strong ownership of the community. CMP approach is demand driven and promotes community participation and mobilization. Therefore, CMP approach can be very efficient to address the need of safe drinking water in rural areas of Ethiopia and improving the quality of life of rural people. In rural areas where socio-economic abilities of communities are poor, the project has to promote productive uses of water to improve lives and reduce operation and management costs by creating awareness of wise use of water points and protecting it from external damage and misutilization. There has to be equitable distribution of water points among the communities during implementation based on the priority