Evaluation of Integrated Water and Environmental Resources Management Program in the Rural Areas of Palestine.

Project Overview

Palestinian Hydrology Group (PHG) is the largest Palestinian NGO working to improve access to water and sanitation services, and to monitor pollution and climate change in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It started to implement the Integrated water and environmental resources management Program (A Multi-Donors Program) in April 2002 in the West Bank & Gaza strip which has ended in December 2005. The main objectives of this core program were to:Enhance social justice through enabling equal opportunities and fair competition for resource allocation for all communities; Increase Palestinian resistance against Israeli measures in water sector by reducing dependency on external sources, especially in emergencies; Eliminate environmental degradation and ensure resource sustainability by development of new water /wastewater projects, and enhancing the management efficiency of such projects;Empower the public by encouraging their participation in local water management through sharing information, capacity building, promoting conservation techniques and practices.Delineate gender aspects of water related issues through ensuring proper representation of women in different levels of water planning and management; and Improve the technical and administrative performance of PHG to ensure its work sustainability.After the program completion, PHG was planned to conduct an evaluation study to assess its impact and the results achieved. To this end PHG has contracted GCT to implement this assignment in an objective manner. The main goal was to assess the program’s impact during its life time (2002-2005), in order to help and support PHG to build on the final findings and in better defining results -based program during the implementation of next core program.