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Kathmandu, Bagmati Zone, Nepal
I am Basan Shrestha from Kathmandu, Nepal. I use the term 'BASAN' as 'Balancing Actions for Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources'. I am a Design, Monitoring & Evaluation professional. I hold 1) MSc in Regional and Rural Development Planning, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, 2002; 2) MSc in Statistics, Tribhuvan University (TU), Kathmandu, Nepal, 1995; and 3) MA in Sociology, TU, 1997. I have more than 10 years of professional experience in socio-economic research, monitoring and documentation on agricultural and natural resource management. I had worked in Lumle Agricultural Research Centre, western Nepal from Nov. 1997 to Dec. 2000; CARE Nepal, mid-western Nepal from Mar. 2003 to June 2006 and WTLCP in far-western Nepal from June 2006 to Jan. 2011, Training Institute for Technical Instruction (TITI) from July to Sep 2011, UN Women Nepal from Sep to Dec 2011 and Mercy Corps Nepal from 24 Jan 2012 to 14 August 2016 and CAMRIS International in Nepal commencing 1 February 2017. I have published articles to my credit.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Results Chain, An Exemplary Case – Basan Shrestha

I have prepared an imaginary article that could be used as a case for training and orientation on results chain to identify the goal, outcomes and interventions.

An international development agency was interested to undertake a public health project in one of the least developed countries. Experts from the agency reviewed the findings of Demographic Health Survey (DHS) and found that Nepal was one of the least developed countries having high child mortality rate for decades. DHS 1996 of Nepal data showed that the under-5 mortality rate was 118 deaths per 1,000 live births. Although that was reduced to 61 in a decade (DHS 2006) but the rate was still high. Under-5 mortality is defined as the probability of dying between birth and the fifth birthday. Then, the agency decided to undertake a project in Nepal, but was not clear which part of Nepal would be appropriate for the intervention. Then, the experts contacted Ministry of Health in Nepal to get the detailed dataset of child mortality rate in different parts of Nepal for past two decades. The MoH authority then directed the agency to New ERA in Nepal and ICF in the USA for the detailed dataset which had provided technical support to MoH to collect DHS data periodically. The international agency experts then reviewed the detailed dataset and found that one village in ………….foot hill had significantly higher under-5 mortality rate of 95 in 2006.  Then, the agency selected the village and undertook public health project for a decade. Afterward a decade, the same experts from the agency visited to evaluate the project achievement in 2017.

The experts started journey towards the village and noticed several changes. They noticed that open fecal discharge along the village roads were non-existent which was highly prevalent a decade ago. There were no bad smells, rather flowers were found blooming and spreading good smells along the roads. Every house in the village had toilet. Some houses had pit toilets and others had drained toilets. The experts interacted with the community members about the changes and noticed that some offenders in the communities a decade ago who did not favour to construct toilet in their houses were happy to share their positive attitude. Those offenders were turned to the change agents advocating for construction and use of toilet. The change agents formed the youth forum and provided training to youth volunteers and mobilized to orient community people through street drama. The change agents placed hoarding boards along the community roads and community displaying the message to encourage the construction and use of toilet and fined those defecating open. The fined money was used for awareness, cleaning and sweeping campaigns. The Village Development Committee (VDC) declared the VDC as the Open Defecation Free (ODF) zone.

The project had supported the community houses to construct biogas plants linking the animal sheds with the house toilets. The project had supported to purchase animals such as cows, buffaloes and goats for income generation as well as use of dungs for producing biogas. The project supported for fodder and forage for animals. That increased annual farm income from $1000 before the project to $1500 after the project. The household consumption of fuelwood for cooking purpose decreased from 800 kg of fuelwood to 300 kg per months after the project.


The project had supported to construct the toilets in the schools and public places and also the biogas plants linking the toilets. The project had supported to construct water collection ponds and electric water pumps for water supply in the schools and public places. Besides, the project had supported for household water supply system for drinking and sanitation purposes. As a result, people started to drink hygienic water and also use and clean toilet in their houses, schools and public places. The community people shared that the diarrhea and dysentery related check up and consultation visit to the health post reduced from every month to only two times a year. On the top of that, the District Public Health Office record showed that the under-5 mortality rate reduced to 35 over the decade. DHS 2016 shows that the current under-5 mortality rate for Nepal is 39.

The agency experts visited local government agencies, the Village Development Committee office, ward offices and village Water Sanitation and Hygiene Committee to interact about the project support and changes. The local government authorities shared that they did not certify any household for sale or purchase of land without verifying that the house has constructed the toilet and used it. The authorities shared that they did not certify the new building construction without the provision of a toilet and did not issue the house construction completion certificate without verifying that the house has constructed a toilet also. The authorities shared that they certified the household members for education scholarship or any other government support after verifying that the house has a toil and members are using it. The project had supported the local government agencies and committee to develop the guidelines and monitoring support for verification of toilet construction and use. Overall, several interventions were attributable to the project contributing to achieve the goal.

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