Report On Assessment of the Effectiveness and Viability of WaterAid's Micro-WASH Finance (MWF) Pilot

Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects that focus on hardware installations has a conventional approach which focuses on moving people from open defecation through building of low-cost latrines. However, the process often does not address the sustainability of the services. With an aim to assess the potential of micro-finance in addressing sustainability issues of WASH services WaterAid launched a pilot under SAWR project. The assessment of the initiative shows, MFI  clients reported spending around BDT 5,000 to access WS services, having an average amount of BDT 9,000 disbursed per client refers that clients are accessing additional amount of loans from the MFIs. This on one hand is enabling them to invest in income generating activities (IGAs), and facilitating easier repayment ability; on the other hand, the MFIs also can maintain a relatively higher average loan size for such 'special purpose' loan.