_{By Thea Mink, RISE Masters student, Emory University, USA}

_{4 November 2023}

The 2023 Water and Health Conference, hosted by the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, brought attendees together to discuss learnings and opportunities for global and U.S. domestic water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Among key topics, like WaSH in fragile contexts and assessing power imbalances within WaSH, participatory design and process evaluations of WaSH interventions were also discussed. I presented on a mixed-methods process evaluation of RISE’s community engagement and participatory design approach, which leveraged RISE’s Water for Women-funded research. The process evaluation aimed to complement Dr. Naomi Francis and colleagues’ qualitative research on the key mechanisms of the RISE participatory design approach, which identified approaches and activities for further implementation of RISE and comparable programs.

Our process evaluation results suggested that the RISE participatory design phase achieved good reach (participation) and participant satisfaction among RISE intervention settlements Makassar and Suva. However, we also found that there were gender and social inequities in participants’ reported satisfaction. In Suva, women were more likely to want more influence over RISE-related decision-making compared to men, despite similar odds of participation. Additionally, Hindu Indo-Fijian residents were more likely to want less influence compared to Christian residents.

These findings, among others, present opportunities for future RISE implementation and highlight the value of process evaluation for similar programs. Our process evaluation paper is in progress.