Posted on August 20, 2012

Gates Foundation Awards $10.9 Million to Improve Sanitation and Hygiene in Cambodia, Vietnam

The East Meets West Foundation in Oakland, California, has announced a $10.9 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand its results-based model for improving sanitation and hygiene practices among the rural poor in Vietnam and Cambodia.

In Cambodia and Vietnam, unsafe sanitation and hygiene practices result in an estimated 17,000 deaths — 90 percent of them children under the age of five — and economic losses of $1.2 billion annually. According to government data, approximately 50 percent of households in Vietnam and 80 percent in Cambodia lack sanitation facilities. To address the problem, the grant will be used to bring East Meets West's integrated community-driven approach to sanitation- and hygiene-related behavioral change to two hundred and ninety communities, benefiting up to 1.7 million people in 344,000 households. The model, which requires an initial investment from recipients and rewards them for results, includes education about proper sanitation and hygiene, access to sources of financing enabling families to install latrines and hand-washing devices in their homes, a cash rebate once installation and use of a latrine has been verified, and conditional cash transfers to communities that achieve a 30 percent increase in sanitation coverage.

To achieve its goals, East Meets West will work with organizations, government agencies, banks, and a variety of private partners. In Vietnam, partners include the Vietnam Women's Union, the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies, and the Health Environmental Management Agency of the Ministry of Health. In Cambodia, partners include the Cambodian Women for Peace and Development, the Kampot Province Department of Rural Development, and the Ministry of Rural Development.

"Change requires innovation, and with our results-based approach to aid, everyone involved has skin in the game," said East Meets West president John Anner. "By ensuring that funders, suppliers, educators, and aid recipients alike share in both the responsibility and the benefit of aid, we're turning sustainable behavior change into a win for everyone."