Designing a Loan Funded Scale up Project for the Power Fund for the Poor
Client: Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Duration: December 2007 to March 2008

The Power Fund for the Poor (PFP) was piloted as a supplementary project supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as part of its ongoing partnership with the Government of Sri Lanka, to extend the electricity grid to rural areas with the objective of increasing productivity and reducing poverty. It aimed to test a micro-finance loan scheme that would enable poor households to cover the capital costs of grid-connected electricity. Based on CEPA’s input into designing the pilot in 2004, CEPA was assigned to evaluate the pilot and structure the scale-up.

The scale-up study included elements of poverty targeting based on poverty data and electricity coverage plans and assessing fund flows in line with the micro-finance option that was piloted, alternative models for MFI involvement and the government’s preference to channel directly through the CEB.

Evaluation of Community Bus Service
Client: Lanka Forum for Rural Transport Development (LFTRD)
Duration: October to December 2008

A brief evaluation was carried out by two CEPA staff members on a community managed bus service that has been in operation for the last 10 years. This bus service was a pilot initiative, designed based on concepts of community participation and the recognition of the capacity of rural communities to design, implement and maintain a transport service of their own. The project was implemented by the Rural Transport Promoters Guarantee Company, a local community-based organization in Kithulpe, Ratnapura. The evaluation brought out the fact that this type of service is viable beyond economic and managerial terms. It has shown that the community valued the service and was proud of their own initiative. In the context of deteriorating rural transport services, and the need to link rural communities to markets and growth centres, community bus services can provide a viable alternative and should be more widely supported.

Focus City Project: Community-based Assessment and Improvement of Living Environments of Under Served Settlements and its Environs: The Case of Gothamipura - Colombo
Client: Colombo Municipal Council (CMC)
Duration: June 2007 to December 2009

Following previous collaborations with the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), CEPA has been a part of a CMC-led action research project that is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada and forms a part of a regional initiative involving eight cities.

The action research project aims to contribute to improving the living conditions of a selected under-served settlement (USS) - Gothamipura in Colombo and its surrounding neighbourhood - by increasing access to selected services, reducing environmental burdens and improving vulnerable living conditions. CEPA’s role is to develop and operationalise the monitoring and evaluation process, consolidate and communicate learning from the action research to local and international stakeholders.

The CMC operational objective is to use water and sanitation (focusing on sewerage) as an entry point to develop a participatory service-delivery model. The learning objectives are to improve knowledge of the link between poverty (as expressed in terms of financial, socio-political, resource and human assets) and environmental burdens (such as flooding, health issues, and poor sanitation) and to assess how improved access to services contributes to an improved sense of land tenure security. It also has a long term institutional objective of trying to use the project model to improve CMC initiatives and policies relating to urban service provision and poverty reduction; and a capacity building objective that seeks to enhance the team’s capability to do participatory research and communication and be involved in a learning network with other Focus City teams and with the community.

Two years into the project, the work is yielding some interesting insights into urban poverty and the relationships among community members and other stakeholder of the under-served settlements. Community participation is clearly linked to actual activities occurring and the priority given by them to these activities. Distrust, questioning and criticism has reduced and the community became very supportive as the actual work started.

Independent External Monitoring of Resettlement from the Southern Transport Development Project
Client: Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Duration: March 2006 to December 2008

A two year engagement on this project drew to an end in December 2008; but the ADB has requested that the monitoring continues for at least another two years. A new concept note and plan has been drawn up for what will effectively be an extension of the existing technical assistance contract.
The assignment has been a tremendous learning experience for CEPA, and we hope for the Road Development Authority (RDA) and ADB as well. For CEPA, there were several firsts that the assignment attempted: a 400 household sample was the largest CEPA had undertaken at that point, and was a stimulus to developing CEPA’s capacity to carry out quantitative research. The CRISE work that followed attempts an even bigger sample. Combining the quantitative and qualitative in a single tool so as to minimise respondent fatigue was another first, and one that other mixed methodology practitioners are yet to adopt as a rule. The programme also sought to use the evidence gathered to influence policy and practice at different levels: at the level of implementation of the resettlement activity of the Southern Transport Development Project; at the level of implementation of the National Involuntary Resettlement Policy and at the level of the formulation of ADB’s safeguard policies. A separate ODI project conducted parallel to this for 18 months took an ‘outsider’ view of how the study team was carrying out these ‘influencing’ activities and provided important insights that helped structure and fine-tune the influencing work.
Much of the learning from the field work has already been documented in last year’s annual report, especially by those who worked on date collection. In addition, there were important lessons about relationship building and influencing that are worth highlighting. Faced initially with hostility from every side, from the affected persons and their representatives and the executing agency, CEPA was able to gain the confidence of all stakeholders by the end of 2008. There hasn’t necessarily always been agreement, since each stakeholder group has its own interests and seeks to interpret objective, triangulated evidence from their own particular perspective. However, the process of continuous dialogue, transparency of process and findings, the ability to develop (and stick to) a strong research framework that included a representative sample and high levels of triangulation, enabled CEPA to provide monitoring evidence that was generalisable, and reflected the situation of those who were affected by the construction of the Colombo-Matara Highway.
It would appear that, individual stories notwithstanding, in general compensation was adequate and the resettlement process did help most affected people to get back a living standard that they enjoyed before their displacement. However, there continues to be problems in terms of the restoration of livelihoods, the replacement of common property, and ongoing impacts of construction.
The resettlement process was carried out at a tremendous cost to the Government of Sri Lanka, and there are many lessons that can be drawn from the experience that will influence how resettlement is carried out in the future. The cost of implementing a comprehensive resettlement scheme of this nature may also constrain the replicability of some of the more positive elements of the process. The final stages of this project looked to share this knowledge with a wider audience, through a National Stakeholder Workshop, and CEPA’s Annual Symposium on Poverty Research.

Survey on Willingness and Ability to Pay for Pro-Poor Household Water Connections
Client: ECO-Asia – USAID
Duration: September 2008 to March 2009

CEPA carried out an assessment on urban poor households’ willingness and ability to pay for water services through house connections, for the Environmental Cooperation-Asia (ECO-Asia), a USAID regional project working on urban water and sanitation issues. The assessment included design and implementation of a survey using contingency valuation methods to establish market demand and willingness to pay for individual water services. The information generated from the study will inform ECO-Asia’s strategy to support the National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) to increase coverage of individual house connections among poor urban households in Sri Lanka.
The survey was carried out in 248 households in 15 purposively selected under-served settlements (USS) in the municipalities of Moratuwa, Dehiwala/Mount-Lavinia and Colombo, where there is a high concentration of USS and use of public facilities. The findings showed a very high demand for better water services. However, the experience with applying willingness to pay methodology showed that households articulated their ability rather than willingness to pay, therefore indicating that pro poor water policies and strategies need to consider this gap between demand/the felt need and affordability, as well as the diverse nature of USS and that giving individual water connections alone may not be adequate to improve the living conditions of urban poor.