Objectives to address the conditions of women and the poor must be integral to program logics and made a strong, shared priority in order to be effective. Provisions to systematically address gender and the conditions of the poor at the national and utility levels were intricately integrated in policies, institutional organigrams, objectives, and strategy documents at the national and utility levels. Also, the National Agency for Water and Sanitation (ANAS) and AdS had gender and social units established with strategies, workplans and some activities underway by the end of the compact; however, these received little attention or support outside of the units, which operated mostly in isolation despite many efforts to mainstream. At the time of the interim evaluation, the social and gender units were not fully staffed and not very active. Gender and social inclusion objectives and activities must be core to program logics, shared priorities across all sectors and conveyed to the government as priorities with equal standing to the others, in order to ensure strong commitment from implementers during the compact to increase the chances that those stakeholders will prioritize gender and social inclusion results even after the compact has ended.
Lesson Learned