Participatory community monitoring for water, sanitation, and hygiene : the NicaSalud experience

This report summarizes the NicaSalud report, "Experiencias en la implementación de la Metodología de Monitoreo Comunitario Participativo para Agua, Higiene y Saneamiento," that documents the Participatory Community Monitoring (PCM) Initiative project. It highlights the PCM methodology for use by program planners and managers who would like to include PCM in their water, sanitation, and hygiene programmes. PCM establishes a process whereby community members share monitoring responsibilities with development organizations, but it is not a tool for measuring project impact. This report is organized into three sections and an annex. The first section explains why this methodology was created and identifies the key issues that NGOs need to address in designing a PCM program; the second section presents the four phases and 24 steps of the methodology; the third section explains how organizations can integrate the PCM methodology into their monitoring system and how communities can make PCM an ongoing tool for their development. The annex identifies key participatory methods and tools, highlights their advantages and disadvantages, and describes when and with whom they should be used.