Chapter 5 – Waterschool in Action

5.1 Waterschool Implementation Starting

At this point the community and its leaders, like the politicians and journalists, will be more interested in the actions and results (e.g., reducing plastic waste), and need to be reminded and encouraged that monitoring and reporting must be concurrent with the action.

This is where community enthusiasm can decline or be destroyed, if the action (especially in its finances) is not transparent, and made fully clear to all the stakeholders.

5.2 Work Continues Until Completion

While work is in progress, the mobilizer has a responsibility of ensuring that monitoring is carried out (especially by the community members as well as by any of the other stake holders).

Transparency, especially about the amounts and purposes of any payments, is necessary to maintain community interest and trust in its own executive.

To do that, you can use some Project Management tools, not so difficult to use: for instance, Gantt is a very well known tool letting you to have immediate visual appraisal of the current status of your project.

TIP 11 ⇒ Here you have a Gantt Plan sample, to better learn how to manage the Waterschool Project.

5.3 Monitoring and Reporting

While the monitoring and reporting is aimed at observing the action in order to make adjustments and avoid getting off track, it is then supplemented by more in-depth assessment and evaluation.

This includes the assessment of impact of the action, and a value judgement about how it was carried out, if it should have been carried out, and what instead should have been planned.

This in turn opens the door to repeating the cycle, because it serves the same purpose as the initial situation analysis and community assessment.

TIP 12 ⇒ A short Final Report sample to let your Waterschool be transparent to all the stakeholders.

5.4 Waterschool Official Completion Ceremony

While a ceremony and celebration is a special holiday for most people, it is hard work for the mobilizer.

As with the Launch Ceremony discussed above, the project completion ceremony is an opportunity to make a new publicized public event, to raise awareness about your school empowerment and to give proof of the relevance of school community participation in the Waterschool project.

The completion ceremony, replete with the press and cultural entertainment, is also an opportunity to give some kind of public recognition of the results obtained by the project, and this can happen, for example, through the delivery to the school of a certificate of completion of the whole Waterschool path.

Now yours is a Waterschool in its own right: congratulations!

TIP 13 ⇒ Sample of Waterschool Final Certificate.