AQWA Global Independent Reports
WAH were proud to welcome Team AQWA to Kampong Chhnang in 2017 and 2018. AQWA is a social impact assessment group, based in Paris. AQWA devoted over 7 weeks across consecutive years, to conduct independent, deep dive analysis into WAH impact programs. Backed by comparative studies across other provinces in Cambodia, Team AQWA produced a highly detailed data report on overall levels of effectiveness, with learnings and recommendations for project improvements. These reports are an invaluable tool to better understand on-ground realities, with specific insights to help drive our long-term roadmap, including relevant and sustainable program scalability :
2018 Medical Training and 2017 Clean Water System assessment : seven week missions x2, divided into three stages:
Preparation (1 week): time spent with WAH team understanding objectives and activities, defining the parameters of AQWA study and drafting questionnaires for each relevant stakeholder.
Data collection (3 weeks): travelling across four provinces in Cambodia interviewing over 200 beneficiaries – school principles, teachers, students, midwives, nurses, doctors & managers.
Data analysis (3 weeks): analyse information using different SIA tools and methodologies: package the key takeaways into a report and present findings to the WAH Board and Management team.
Medical Training Impact
Maternal and infant mortality is a significant concern in Cambodia. 1 out of every 4 women have no access to a skilled birth attendant, while nearly one out of every five child deaths is due to acute respiratory distress. National maternal mortality rate of 170 (per 100,000 live births) and child mortality rate of 54 (per 1,000 live births) remains high.
Still, considerable progress has been made in the last decade due to government intervention and NGO support. Key strategies have included providing access to quality family planning, establishing emergency obstetric and newborn care facilities, expanding universal health coverage and investing in midwife and pediatric trainings.
The latter has been the key focus area for WAH, and AQWA experience in the field really highlighted the difference that a quality training programme can make to midwives and doctors, not just to their knowledge and skills, but also to their confidence and job satisfaction. By visiting target and control group health facilities, AQWA team could analyse the skill gaps between the medical staff, understand the key variances between various health training programmes and listen to the perspectives of the ultimate beneficiaries – the patients.
AQWA learnings and recommendations have been welcome & highly constructive for WAH development:- helping to improve existing training, deploy new modules, identify new donors, and as preparation to scale sustainably.
“Professionally, it helped me gain experience in SIA and observe up-close the operations and challenges in an NGO. Despite the constraints that WAH faced on a daily basis (like lack of resources, finance, technology, etc.), I was inspired not just by the work that they were doing, but also by their commitment. The WAH employees worked hard and with motivation and a smile on their faces. You could see that everyone went above and beyond their role description to ensure their work was making a positive contribution to the community” - Kartikye Aggarwal, AQWA Project Manager