Authors: Helene Duamelle, Yutong Teng, Alexis McCauley-Pearl, Kate Gannon, Will Ingram, and Katarzyna Mikolajczak

Originally published on LSE Grantham Research Institute

Community volunteers or ‘champions’ are often recruited in Africa to facilitate local water resource monitoring, advocate for sustainable practices and support local water governance. Researchers from the BASIN water security project outline the role these champions often play in NGO programming and some of the common pitfalls.

Water insecurity in Africa is deeply intertwined with issues of access, equity and governance. These challenges are further exacerbated by climate change, which is altering precipitation patterns and worsening drought conditions, intensifying water stress across the continent. In response, some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have prioritised participatory and community-based approaches within water management initiatives – often incorporating community volunteers.

By engaging local community members in adaptive water management and environmental decision-making, NGOs aim to integrate local insights to strengthen resilient water systems that are well-adapted to regional conditions and to promote sustainable water usage. Recruiting community volunteers as part of this strategy can help drive programmes at a grassroots level.

This approach is used by water-sector NGOs including WaterAid and Water Witness International, who are partners in the BASIN project – which draws insights from behavioural science to enhance climate resilience and inclusion in water security. These NGOs are implementing programmes in countries including Tanzania and Burkina Faso to develop community volunteers, known variously as water ‘champions’, ‘relays’ and ‘Mashahidi’. Such recruitment enables community members to assume new roles and responsibilities within a decentralised model of water governance.

Data collection, advocacy and coordinating community action

Duties of water champions include direct water monitoring and data collection, spearheading sustainable water resource management activities among their communities and advocating on behalf of their community to hold duty-bearers, such as district water officials, to account.

Where champion programmes involve capacity-building, volunteers could be trained to collect data on local water resources, monitor climate variability and aid in sustainable resource management, which they might also be tasked with promoting among their communities. Champions may provide this data to government authorities to plug water and climate information gaps and support wider monitoring programmes. Supplying such technical assistance can allow volunteers to collaborate with technical specialists from government agencies, to ensure that their volunteer activities align with the needs and standards of national and institutional frameworks and bolster the credibility and uptake of community-driven initiatives and datasets.

Some NGOs also emphasise empowering community volunteers to take on advocacy and negotiation roles: to act as conduits between communities and the state, compiling community concerns and channelling them to relevant authorities. One NGO partner in BASIN explained: “One of the crucial things that we’re going to do is to give the community a voice to hold accountable institutions that are tasked to assist in addressing climate change challenges.” For example, in Tanzania’s heavily polluted Msimbazi River Basin, champions are working with communities to identify pollution sources, document evidence, and expose the issue publicly to pressurise regulatory authorities into acting against polluting industries.

Promoting fairness and building community knowledge

Community water champion models have the potential to enhance procedural justice and fairness in collaborative water planning, by fostering effective community management and participation in planning and implementation processes. Communities on the frontline of climate-related challenges are crucial stakeholders in environmental decision-making and empowering local citizens may help define and shape effective andequitable development strategies.

Involving communities in climate monitoring can also help improve understanding of climate science in local contexts. Through their training, water champions may play the role of multi-scalar ‘knowledge brokers’, helping to translate global climate knowledge into actionable local strategies. Community champion projects also create new ways for people to share knowledge from the bottom up and have their voices heard by decision-makers. With their newfound knowledge from monitoring climate processes, champions may be taken more seriously by institutional decision-makers when advocating for local needs and policy priorities. Through their involvement in community champion projects, marginalised groups can also develop skills and understanding needed to advocate for fairer policies and demand accountability from those in power, ultimately working to create more inclusive and equitable systems.

Challenges to champion programmes

Despite the clear potential benefits of champion programmes, they face notable challenges that could undermine their long-term effectiveness if not addressed.

Firstly, they do not guarantee meaningful inclusion. Community-led governance can replicate existing hierarchies and inequalities and result in inadequate representation and engagement of marginalised groups. There are known instances of elected officials selecting community members to be water champions who were friends or already in roles of power in the community: such behaviour excludes vulnerable voices and perpetuates unequal power dynamics. Furthermore, without careful design and ongoing support for incorporating inclusion into community-led governance, marginalised groups may be excluded from decision-making even if they are present. NGOs working in the water sector have recognised this challenge and enhancing inclusion within champion programmes has been a significant area of focus in recent years.

Securing the long-term engagement of champions after a period of initial engagement remains another key challenge for NGOs, including BASIN partners WaterAid and Water Witness International. Research from public health disciplines highlights the importance of organisational support in keeping volunteers engaged and feeling valued. When volunteers perceive their contributions as being recognised and impactful, their commitment to volunteerism strengthens. Conversely, studies have also indicated that a lack of this support, especially if it is not delivered in a personally meaningful or culturally appropriate manner, can lead to frustration and the disengagement of volunteers – or even a feeling of being overwhelmed with responsibility, potentially leading to burnout.

Compensation, whether in the form of monetary rewards, stipends or opportunities for professional development, has been recognised as a key driver for retaining volunteers in some contexts. However, the effectiveness of these incentives can vary widely. Studies in behavioural science indicate that offering inappropriate compensation at the wrong time can undermine intrinsic motivations that are critical to effective volunteer programmes. It is therefore crucial that compensation strategies not only encourage ongoing volunteer participation but also align with local values and needs to ensure the long-term sustainability of volunteerism.

Continuity in the personal relationships that volunteers have with programme administrators is another important factor shaping volunteer retention. For example, where institutional roles change without effective knowledge transfer, project implementation may suffer due to communication breakdown and disrupted community engagement.

Understanding and addressing the factors that affect community volunteer commitment is a key priority for BASIN partners, who aim to improve long-term volunteer engagement to maximise the potential for champion programmes to achieve equitable water security outcomes. The BASIN project is exploring these factors, and more, through diverse case studies across the partnership, and interrogating the principles and assumptions behind these champion models. We will be focusing on determinants that influence why volunteers sign up, what makes them stay actively engaged over time, and why they drop out from their roles. With these insights it will be possible to start to develop evidence-based interventions and changes to NGO programming to enhance the sustained engagement of water champions, and ultimately have better ways to support these special and impactful individuals from communities who are on the frontline of the water security and climate change challenge.