The Impact of Market Assessment on The Sustainability of Humanitarian Projects in Yemen: INGOs Perspective

Sustainability of humanitarian projects has increasingly become an important theme that all INGOs, donors, fundraisers, beneficiaries, and stakeholders are focusing on in the time being. However, some humanitarian projects in Yemen have been suffering from the lack of sustainability. This study aims to examine the impact of market assessment on the sustainability of humanitarian projects in Yemen from the perspective of international NGOs. Quantitative approach was employed, and questionnaires were used to collect data from nine INGOs in Yemen; namely OXFAM, Handicap, Care, ACF, NRC, DRC, Islamic Relief, Save Children and Acted. The sample comprises of 207 participants, out of which 168 (81.16%) responded. The results indicate that there is a significant strong positive correlation between market assessment and the sustainability of humanitarian projects in Yemen. In addition, the results show that market assessment explain 84.1% of the sustainability of humanitarian projects. Furthermore, market assessment has a significant impact on the sustainability of humanitarian projects. Necessarily, projects management should take market assessment as critical aspect along all the stages of projects cycles starting from need assessment to project designing, proposal development, planning, implementation and monitoring and finally in review and evaluation, the time of project closure, and lesson learned. If not, the sustainability of projects in Yemen will continue to be problematic and cause loose of satisfaction of beneficiaries and trust of donors. Similarly, all project staff should be aware of market developments around them, including the access to the market, concentration of the markets, availability and cost of required goods, accessibility by buyers and sellers to the market, and most importantly integration of several markets. Therefore, the design of the projects will be based on the practical points that will help to ensure the budget allocated and the best quality of response. Finally, the design of the projects should be built on lesson learned from previous projects in the same context and same experience in the thematic and geographic areas that have the full market assessment summaries.

Closing well: national and international humanitarian workers’ perspectives on the ethics of closing humanitarian health projects

Project closure is a core feature of humanitarian action. However, how decisions to end projects are made, and how closure is planned and implemented, has implications for upholding ethical commitments, and can have positive or negative consequences for affected communities, local stakeholders, and humanitarian organizations and their staff. To better understand the ethical dimensions of closing humanitarian projects, we undertook an investigation of national and international humanitarian workers’ experiences.Guided by interpretive description methodology, we conducted an exploratory qualitative study with two rounds of semi-structured interviews. Four national and five international staff of non-governmental organizations with experience of humanitarian health project closure took part. The participants had diverse professional roles and disciplinary backgrounds. All participants took part in the first round of interviews which focused on experiences and perceptions of ethics and project closure. Analysis of these interviews contributed to the development of a draft “ethics guidance note.” Five of the participants took part in the second round of interviews which focused on receiving feedback on the draft guidance note. We used constant comparative techniques and a recursive approach to data collection and analysis. In this article, we draw on both rounds of interviews to present findings related to how participants understood and experienced ethical responsibilities, challenges, and opportunities for humanitarian project closure.We identified six recurrent ethical concerns highlighted by interviewees regarding closure of humanitarian projects: respectfully engaging with partners and stakeholders, planning responsively, communicating transparently, demonstrating care for local communities and staff during project closure, anticipating and acting to minimize harms, and attending to sustainability and project legacy. We present these ethical concerns according to the temporal horizon of humanitarian action, that is, arising across five phases of a project’s timeline: design, implementation, deciding whether to close, implementing closure, and post-closure.This exploratory study contributes to discussions concerning the ethics of project closure by illuminating how they are experienced and understood from the perspectives of national and international humanitarian workers. The interview findings contributed to the development of an ethics guidance note that aims to support project closures that minimize harms and uphold values, while being mindful of the limits of ethical ideals in non-ideal circumstances.

Community Participation in Project Closure principles and Performance of Community Water Supply Projects in Kericho County, Kenya

The purpose of this article was to establish the extent to which community participation in project closure principles influences the performance of community water supply projects in Kericho county Kenya. The indicators used included community participation in; project documentation and archiving, procurement closure and bills settlement and project handing over and celebration. The study adopted descriptive survey design and correlation research design. The descriptive survey design was used to describe characteristics of the population being studied whilst a correlational research was used to describe the degree to which variables under the study were related. The target population was 8357 and the sample size was 382. Out of this, 310 positively responded. The sample comprised of households and management committee members. The research instruments included questionnaires, focus group discussion and interview schedules. Stratified proportional sampling and random sampling were used to collect primary qualitative and quantitative data. The data was compiled, given codes and input into SPSS version 25 computer program for statistical analysis and presentation. The study findings showed that community participation in project documentation and archiving (R=0.680, p=0.00<0.05, R2=0.461), procurement closure and bills settlement (R=0.772, p=0.00<0.05, R2=0.595) and project handing over and celebration (R=0.746, p=0.00<0.05, R2=0.554) are significant explanatory variables with respect to project performance at 95% confidence level. Therefore, the study concluded that the community should be encouraged to actively participate more during the project closure process in order to enhance the performance of their community water supply projects.

Realizing Beneficial End Uses from Abandoned Pit Lakes

Pit lakes can represent significant liabilities at mine closure. However, depending upon certain characteristics of which water quality is key, pit lakes often also present opportunities to provide significant regional benefit and address residual closure risks of both their own and overall project closure and even offset the environmental costs of mining by creating new end uses. These opportunities are widely dependent on water quality, slope stability, and safety issues. Unfortunately, many pit lakes have continued to be abandoned without repurposing for an end use. We reviewed published pit lake repurposing case studies of abandoned mine pit lakes. Beneficial end use type and outcome varied depending upon climate and commodity, but equally important were social and political dynamics that manifest as mining company commitments or regulatory requirements. Many end uses have been realized: passive and active recreation, nature conservation, fishery and aquaculture, drinking and industrial water storage, greenhouse carbon fixation, flood protection and waterway remediation, disposal of mine and other waste, mine water treatment and containment, and education and research. Common attributes and reasons that led to successful repurposing of abandoned pit lakes as beneficial end uses are discussed. Recommendations are given for all stages of mine closure planning to prevent pit lake abandonment and to achieve successful pit lake closure with beneficial end uses.

An Integrated Approach Supporting Remediation of an Aquifer Contaminated with Chlorinated Solvents by a Combination of Adsorption and Biodegradation

Hydrogeological uniqueness and chemical-physical peculiarities guide the contamination dynamics and decontamination mechanisms in the environmental arena. A single composite geodatabase, which integrates geological/hydrological, geophysical, and chemical data, acts as a “cockpit” in the definition of a conceptual model, design of a remediation strategy, implementation, near-real-time monitoring, and validation/revision of a pilot test, and monitoring full-scale interventions. The selected remediation strategy involves the creation of "reactive" zones capable of reducing the concentration of chlorinated solvents in groundwater through the combined action of adsorption on micrometric activated carbon, which is injected into the aquifer, and degradation of organic contaminants, stimulating the dechlorinating biological activity by the addition of an electron donor. The technology is verified through a pilot test, to evaluate the possibility of scaling up the process. The results of post-treatment monitoring reveal abatement of the concentration of chlorinated solvents and intense biological dechlorination activity. Achieving the remediation objectives and project closure is based on the integration of multidisciplinary data using a multiscale approach. This research represents the first completed example in European territory of remediation of an aquifer contaminated with chlorinated solvents by a combination of adsorption and biodegradation.