Projects should be designed to address the root cause of a clear and evidence‐based problem. In this activity, MCC assumed that changes in the time to gather water would result in greater productivity and increased school attendance. One of the main benefit streams in the project was time savings, but it is unlikely that a reduction of 13 minutes per day in gathering water will amount to large changes in productive uses of time. If the amount of time savings is small, we should think more critically about how we value time savings and what kinds of behavior changes are reasonable to expect as a result of time savings. MCC has addressed this lesson by implementing new project design guidance which has sections that focus on problem analysis.
Lesson Learned