According to the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) policy framework, expanding access to water and sanitation, education and health will be a critical component of the peace dividend because it redresses a key dimension of the historical neglect of the people of the South. The Bridge Project aims to provide services in line with this framework. In doing so, Caritas Switzerland is adopting a 3-Sector Wide Approach (SWA). The three sectors are greatly interwoven and reinforce each other. Using a 3-SWA is therefore cost effective, enhances a holistic approach to service delivery and improves coordination between sectors.
The Bridge Project has proposed to do the following:
Water and Sanitation
Drill and rehabilitate boreholes, build water and roof catchments, construct latrines, mobilise communities, develop hygiene and sanitation materials and raise hygiene and awareness
Education
Construct primary schools, purchase basic equipment and scholastic materials, train teachers, provide Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) minimum standards training and provide management training
Health
Construct one health clinic, purchase equipment, raise awareness on HIV/AIDS and train health workers
Capacity building
Train Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Local Authorities (LA), train builders and purchase various equipment for GoSS
Services provided thus include hardware (building of two schools, a health care centre and water infrastructure) and software (training, skills transfer, apprenticeship for local artisans, change of knowledge, attitudes and practices and social education) components. Furthermore, it mobilises and empowers communities by setting up and training committees and parent-teacher associations for the maintenance and running of services and strengthens local structures by providing leadership training, know-how in community development and monitoring, awareness on peace, gender and civic responsibilities.
The basic service package for communities therefore comprises water and complementing hygiene and sanitation services, a primary school and health centre, which have been highlighted as the areas requiring most attention. Through the Bridge Project, a total of 155,000 men, women, boys and girls are expected to benefit from improved access to primary health care and education, new boreholes and hygiene promotion in Eastern Equatoria. In addition, benefits of the project include increased capacity for local CSOs. It is expected that livelihoods in the region will also improve.
The Bridge Project targets all counties in Eastern Equatoria (see map). That being said, comparatively more agencies provide services in the eastern part of the state, the western part remaining relatively uncovered. The east is easier to access and relatively more secure. For these reasons, the Bridge Project explicitly focuses on the western region in an attempt to balance the distribution of services. The Bridge Project consolidates existing interventions, rehabilitates and provides income generating activities for communities in the east; while it focuses on construction and start-up activities in the west.
Moreover, the Bridge Project pays attention to peace building, HIV/AIDS and promoting gender equality. These are overall cross-cutting issues in Caritas Switzerland’s international cooperation policy and have been interwoven into the project. Whereas the former is mainly tackled through the use of a conflict sensitive approach to service delivery, the latter is principally tackled through awareness-raising. Issue specific training is also taking place.
Social inclusion is another leading principle of the Bridge Project. Although the project advocates for equality between the sexes and establishes mechanisms to redress imbalances, social inclusion in the Bridge Project goes beyond Caritas Switzerland’s gender mainstreaming policy alone. Caritas Switzerland targets the neediest communities and places an added emphasis on reaching marginalised and vulnerable groups within these communities. More specifically, a special focus is put on children who will become the leaders of tomorrow, the future workforce and heads of households in the region (e.g. through formal education and hygiene training). In addition, the Bridge Project uses a flexible and responsive approach in order to integrate Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees on their return.
Finally, the sustainability of the Bridge Project is ensured through a number of mechanisms. Moving away from top-down, supply-led programmes which proved unsustainable, the approach of the Bridge Project has been towards demand-driven approaches based on principles of stakeholder participation and local management. LA and community-felt needs and consortium members’ experience and expertise are the primary criteria and starting point for the selection of interventions. Beneficiaries are involved in each steps of the project management cycle and monitoring is done jointly with LAs and the targeted communities. Sustainability is further enhanced by creating committees selected by the communities and trained by the Bridge Project. This, combined with the requirement that communities contribute to project costs, increases the value of projects to beneficiaries and boosts local ownership for them. Cost recovery elements, to be managed by the committees, are also discussed and introduced where possible and the maintenance and repair of assets are left to communities. In addition, the project focuses on the quality of outputs and the durability of erected structures, making use of appropriate technology. All these measures are designed to ensure long-term sustainability. What is more, lobby strategies are applied to access financial and other support from the LAs; this includes support for training and teachers’ salaries and supplies for schools. An advantage is provided by the church, being on the ground at all times, giving the project a degree of permanency. This is further strengthened through close collaboration with the LAs in the respective areas of intervention. In the end, Caritas Switzerland will phase out and the responsibilities will be gradually handed over to the LAs and targeted communities. All in all, the Bridge Project has an inbuilt capacity building component to ensure that local institutions are strengthened to carry on or take over the project activities in the longer term. The strategy is to work with the community at all levels so as to entrench ownership of the project with the community. The community empowerment programme of the Catholic Diocese of Torit (CDoT), Caritas Switzerland’s consortium partner, will form the basis for empowering communities to take over responsibility for the project in the long term. In sum, as a strategy, sustainability is tackled through the strengthening of LAs and CSOs and building management structures.
