POUL DUE JENSEN FOUNDATION WATER Commitment, partnership and flexible collaboration methods In 2014, the Foundation and PlanBørnefonden embarked on a journey together to provide safe water to rural communities in the Plateaux region of Togo, West Africa. The partnership has deepened through the years, and today, there is an extremely open and frank relation between the Foundation, PlanBørnefonden’s Danish headquarter, the Plan International office in Lomé, and local communities, authorities, and contractors in Togo. Helene Egebjerg from PlanBørnefonden confirms that the Foundation’s approach to project management provides a very flexible platform for the work. At the monthly follow-up meeting, issues can be dealt with as they appear: “We know we can bring up any concern in these meetings, and we don’t have to hide it if there are delays, or if we In the first joint project in Togo, the contractor had built a system with an enormous capacity for lifting water, much more than the community needed. The water tank was made from an elastic material that was directly exposed to sunlight, which is not very healthy if the water stays there for many days. By working together, a solution with adequate water storage and an extra pipeline to a neighbouring community, were constructed, and today, the capacity fits the demand. But the case became one of the reasons why the Foundation changed its approach into a project management model: “We realised that we needed to be closer to the people and organisations on the ground, so that we would be able to prevent bad project designs. Relying on written reporting basically had the opposite effect, so today, I hold regular steering group meetings with the key stakeholders via Skype instead,” explains Nils Thorup, programme manager for Water, Poul Due Jensen Foundation. Meeting the Water Committee of Bayakopé, Nils Thorup and a local official from Direction Régionale de l’Hydraulique. In the background the local school. Photo: PlanBørnefonden 22
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