Simavi annual report 2015

ANNUAL REPORT 2015

Strategy

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Content

Glossary

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Preface

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Executive summary

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PART I REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD 1. Strategy 1.1 Trends in our field 1.2 Vision, mission, strategy 1.3 Core values 1.4 Our Theory of Change 1.5 Our added value 1.6 Key programme areas 2. The sustainable improvement of basic health 2.1 Simavi’s work on SRHR 2.2 Simavi’s work on WASH 2.3 Concrete programme results in 2015 2.4 Our 2015 advocacy work 2.5 Programme case studies 2.6 What went differently than expected 2.7 Monitoring and evaluation 2.8 Policy and programme development 3. Diversified financing and innovative partnerships 3.1 Trends in fundraising 3.2 Fundraising objectives and results 3.3 Income from direct fundraising 3.4 Income from third-party campaigns 3.5 Income from government grants 4. A strong brand and transparent communication 4.1 Our stakeholders 4.2 How we engaged with our stakeholders in 2015 4.3 Complaints 5. A professional organisation 5.1 Organisational development 5.2 Organogram 5.3 Executive board and management team 5.4 Employees 5.5 Internal organisation 5.6 Risk management 6. Financial review 6.1 Accountability 6.2 Income and expenditure 6.3 Financial Key Performance Indicators 7. Our outlook for 2016 7.1 The sustainable improvement of basic health 7.2 Diversified financing and innovative partnerships 7.3 A strong brand and transparent communication 7.4 A professional organisation 7.5 Financial outlook Annex 1: Programme results overview

10-91 12-19 13-14 14-15 15 16-18 19 19 20-47 21-22 22-23 23-27 27-32 33-44 45 46 47 48-59 49 50-51 51-55 56-57 58-59 60-69 62 63-69 69 70-77 71 72 73 74 75 76-77 78-81 79 80 81 82-87 83-84 84 85 85 86-87 88-91

PART II REPORT OF THE SUPERVISORY BOARD

92-97

PART III ANNUAL ACCOUNTS

PART IV OTHER INFORMATION

98-125 126-129

Glossary

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Glossary

Terminology and abbreviations ASK

Simavi’s Access, Skills and Knowledge programme.

basic health

In Simavi’s vision, basic health is a crucial stepping stone for building a better existence and creating a way out of poverty. It refers to fundamental health conditions that need to be fulfilled in order to allow sustainable development; people can only go to school, engage in work and contribute positively to their community when they are in good health.

behaviour change communication

Communication strategies that trigger health-seeking behaviour. The transfer of information plays an important role in creating awareness of healthy behaviour and the benefits of investing in it. The essence of good communication is to convey a clear message to the targeted audience through diverse channels, thereby combining the strengths of both oneway broadcasting and interactive exchange. Simavi uses a variety of communication channels, from drama groups to social media, that are aligned with the target audience’s typical practices.

CBF

Central Bureau for Fundraising in the Netherlands.

CSE comprehensive sexuality education

Comprehensive sexuality education provides young people with the knowledge, life skills and behaviours to make informed decisions about their sexuality and health. CSE programmes are based on human rights principles and thus also help advance general human rights and gender equality.

CSO

Civil society organisation (synonymous with NGO, or non-governmental organisation).

mobile health

Medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants and other wireless devices.

FIETS

Simavi uses this sustainability approach to address the five key areas of effective, lasting change: financial, institutional, environmental, technical and social sustainability.

GNWP

Simavi’s Ghana-Netherlands WASH Programme.

CPD

Commission on Population and Development.

MDG

The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, which have been replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals.

MFS II

Medefinancieringsstelsel (cofinancing system), the name of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ subsidy programme for development cooperation. MFS II is the second iteration of this programme.

prenatal care

Also called antenatal care, this is a type of preventive healthcare designed to treat and prevent potential health problems during pregnancy. Routine prenatal care reduces maternal and infant death rates.

open defecation

The practice of relieving oneself in the open instead of using a toilet Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

PME

Planning, monitoring and evaluation.

SDG

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, the successor to the Millennium Development Goals.

SEHATI

Simavi’s Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene in East Indonesia programme.

SHAW

Simavi’s Sanitation, Hygiene and Water programme.

social accountability

Simavi’s advocacy strategy at the community level has a specific focus on social accountability. Social accountability is an interactive process that aims to increase citizen influence (voice) and to encourage a response from local WASH and SRHR providers and decision-makers. Communities are mobilised and empowered to understand their rights and responsibilities. They are trained in effective meth¬ods to systematically collect evidence of situations where their rights are not being met, to voice their needs, and to nurture relationships with the government. This helps communities to create an envi¬ronment where governments and service providers implement policies and improve services, leading to structural improvements in WASH and SRHR and less inequality. Social accountability breaks social and systemic barriers in contexts where national policies seem to be adequate, but where, in reality, these policies are insufficiently implemented and where inequality prevails.

SRH

Sexual and reproductive health.

SRHR

Sexual and reproductive health and rights.

UACM

Simavi’s Unite Against Child Marriage programme

UFBR

Simavi’s Unite for Body Rights programme

VFI

Goede Doelen Nederland (formerly called Vereniging Fondswervende Instellingen, or VFI), the association of Dutch fundraising institutions

WASH

Water, sanitation and hygiene.

Glossary

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photo: Jerry de Mars

Strategy

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Preface

Taking it to the next level

photo: Huib van Wersch

Last year, we said that we choose optimism – and what a rewarding choice it has been. The year 2015 was a landmark for international development cooperation, with several events representing significant progress. The development world was abuzz with the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris climate talks and the commitment by the Beijing Platform for Action to strive for gender equality by 2030.

This year was also marked by challenges. Nepal was hit by a devastating earthquake that knocked the nation off its feet. After four years of conflict in Syria, the refugee crisis reached a tipping point and Europe was forced to wake up and acknowledge the emergency on its doorstep. Nonetheless, concrete steps were taken around the world to improve the situation of millions of global citizens. A Malawian chief annulled 330 child marriages in her district.

And in Bangladesh, local government units across the country increased their budgets for sanitation and hygiene by an average of 14%.

The year 2015 was also an important turning point for Simavi.

First, we reached a significant milestone: our 90th anniversary. Since 1925 we have been working to achieve basic health for the most vulnerable people in Africa and Asia, because we believe better health enables individuals, communities and countries to flourish. Our experience has shown that investments in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are crucial for people to break the cycle of poverty. On the occasion of Simavi’s 90th anniversary we organised inspiring events, both abroad and at home in the Netherlands. These were attended by Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix, members of our newly created Circle for Change network, and many other stakeholders. We exchanged views on how the development cooperation world is transforming, now and in the coming decennia.

Second, we successfully completed five large programmes that ran through 2015: the Dutch WASH Alliance; Sanitation, Hygiene and Water (SHAW); Unite for Body Rights; Access to Services and Knowledge; and Unite Against Child Marriage. Thanks to these programmes and our other work, we reached more than 5 million people with direct education on WASH and SRHR. Through these programmes we have taken monumental steps towards realising our ambition to sustainably improve the health of 10 million people by 2020.

Third, by choosing optimism we were able to attract funding for a whopping nine new programmes: Get Up Speak Out, More Than Brides, Going for Gold, Unite for Body Rights Bangladesh (next phase), Ritu, Watershed, WASH & Learn, Trachoma SAFE Communities, and Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene in East Indonesia (SEHATI) plus a one-year extension for the WASH Alliance International. We are proud and incredibly pleased that our efforts have paid off so well.

And now we’re ready to take it to the next level. Given Simavi’s desire to increase the impact of our work, we invited the Impact Centre Erasmus research team to catalogue the scientific evidence for our WASH and SRHR interventions. This analysis produced valuable insights that will enrich our programmes to achieve maximum impact.

Dear reader, I would like to thank you with all my heart for your support, which has made a substantial difference in the lives of millions of people. Together, we will take our work to the next level!

Ariette Brouwer Managing Director

Preface

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Executive Summary

The year 2015 was a pivotal year for Simavi. Several major programmes ended in December and we have been developing and securing funding for new ones. All while maintaining our ongoing efforts in the field, advocating at the international and national levels, and taking strategic steps to maximise our impact. Moreover, we celebrated our 90th anniversary in the company of many of our stakeholders. Here, in a nutshell, are the highlights of this remarkable year.

90 years and vibrant In 1925 Simavi two doctors, Van der Spek and Bervoets, founded Simavi. So in 2015, we celebrated our 90th anniversary. We seized this milestone and opportunity to further personalise our approach towards our stakeholders. We organised exciting and unique events that let us engage with our existing and potential constituencies. We also developed a one-year World Tour strategy to support our fundraising objectives and to improve our profile for our corporate stakeholders. Our strategy was two fold: first we attended selected WASH and SRHR conferences worldwide and presented ourselves there through booths, poster presentations, lectures or side-events. Second: we intensified our PR to targeted audiences by publishing the poster presentations, but also fact sheets, blogs, interviews and topical articles on our website and in social media before, during and after each conference.

Our objectives to show who we are (visibility) and to actually connect face-to-face with our constituency (involvement) were more than met. We came back with many new contacts and saw a substantial growth in our website visits and newsletter subscriptions. It was a rewarding experience to have direct and interesting contact with all the people engaged with our work. We will therefore continue our event- and world tour strategy in 2016.

Excellent results Our four largest WASH and SRHR programmes ended in 2015 and thus we measured their long-term results this year to evaluate their success. Those results – the product of several years of dedicated effort by Simavi and our alliance and in-country partners – were impressive: • We reached almost 30 million people through mass media – three times our target.

• Our target for creating access to WASH and SRHR services was 6.7 million people; we actually provided access for 20 million.

• Almost 2.4 million people were reported to be utilising SRHR and WASH services and facilities in 2015, above our target of 2,2 million.

• We reached around 5 million people with direct education on WASH or SRHR or both – twice our target.

• Our UBFR and ASK programmes reported that more than 4 million women had acquired vital SRHR knowledge as a result of the programmes’ interventions.

• We had planned to train around 1,600 people to influence policy or exert social accountability through our WASH programmes; we actually trained almost 2,400.

Ringing in the new beyond expectations In 2015 we said we would choose optimism. And what a rewarding choice this has been! We were able to secure funding for ten major programmes: nine brand new ones - Get Up Speak Out, More Than Brides, Going for Gold, Unite for Body Rights Bangladesh (next phase), Ritu, Watershed, WASH & Learn, Trachoma SAFE Communities, and Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene in East Indonesia (SEHATI)- plus a one-year extension for the WASH Alliance International. This is a phenomenal success that represents our team’s tremendous and tireless dedication throughout the year, and we could not be prouder.

Years of advocacy bear rewarding fruit The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), adopted in September 2015, represent a significant step forward for SRHR and WASH around the globe. Simavi and a host of other SRHR and WASH advocates put major efforts into influencing these Goals. For example, hygiene was not originally included as an indicator. Thanks to a successful campaign

by WASH organisations united under the umbrella of the Global Public Private Partnership

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Executive Summary

on Handwashing, including Simavi, it now is. Closer to home, our advocacy efforts helped to spur a firm commitment in April 2015 by the Dutch minister for foreign trade and development cooperation, Lilianne Ploumen, to provide 50 million people with proper sanitation and 30 million people with safe drinking water by 2030. And on the SRHR front, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs committed €215 million and €93 million to improve SRHR and women’s empowerment, respectively, over the next five years.

Working on tomorrow’s solutions today: evidence-based programming Simavi ventured into the rich and challenging world of evidence-based programming this year. Working with the Impact Centre Erasmus, we catalogued the scientific evidence for our SRHR and WASH interventions. In addition to concretely documenting the substantial impact our work has had on improving basic health in marginalised communities in nine African and Asian countries, this analysis trajectory showed us the need to further sharpen our mission, vision and ambition for the coming decade. We are excited and eager to use these strategic insights to achieve even more impact in 2016 and beyond.

Taking it to the next level Like we mentioned, 2015 was a remarkable year for Simavi: a year in which uncertainty turned into growth, promise and opportunity. And so we are entering 2016 full of confidence.

Against the backdrop of the SDGs and the Dutch government’s pledged support, we will make tremendous strides forward in 2016: implementing our nine new programmes, developing a new programme for the WASH Alliance International, increasing our local presence, deploying our new PME strategy focusing on impact, broadening and deepening our partnerships and our relationships with donors and continuing our national and global advocacy for WASH and SRHR programming that targets the poor and vulnerable.

We are more confident than ever that we can make a substantial difference towards achieving our ambition to structurally improve the health of 10 million people by 2020.

Executive Summary

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PART I REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD

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Strategy

photo: Prabuddha Paul

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Strategy

1. Strategy

photo: Raymond Rutting

Strategy

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1.1 Trends in our field

In our 90 years working in developing countries, we have seen many changes in society, the environment and our field of work. The following trends in particular influenced our work in 2015.

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Finalised in September, the SDGs replaced the Millennium Development Goals at the end of 2015. Over the next 15 years, countries around the world will work to further a wide range of initiatives that address the root causes of poverty: from education to safe water and sanitation, from health and well-being to climate change, and from sustainable consumption and production to peace and justice.

In 2015, Simavi continued its efforts to keep SRHR and WASH on the international agenda.

Our efforts are described in section 2.4.1. Both areas are well represented in the SDGs. In 2016, we will continue to advocate for better representation of WASH and SRHR in the SDG indicators. We will also explore how we can use these indicators to strengthen our programmes’ impact.

Aid and trade. Simavi continues to embrace this trend in which civil society and the private sector work together to reach common goals. Based on an overlap in mission and vision, as well as strong commitments to common goals, Simavi works with several private partners.

We maintain relationships with the private sector that have an intrinsic value and lead to mutual learning and the exchange of experiences. A good example is our relationship with the Dutch engineering company Witteveen+Bos, with whom we run a programme in Tanzania to improve WASH facilities at public primary health facilities. In 2015 we continued and created several partnerships with private companies. Read more about these partnerships in chapters 2 and 3.

The shifting geography of poverty. In recent decades, many developing economies have shifted from low-income to middle-income countries, and today, this is where the vast majority of the world’s poor live1. While governments should always take responsibility for providing essential WASH and SRHR services, external aid remains vital in regions in extreme poverty. In middle-income countries, however, where governments have the budget to provide these services, lobbying and advocacy become effective strategies to ensure they fulfil this responsibility. In 2015, Simavi continued to stress the message that all governments bear the duty to provide essential WASH and SRHR services, and to strengthen their capacity to do so. We also continued our work to empower individuals and communities to articulate and defend their needs.

The erosion of the traditional north-south divide. Southern CSOs – those located in developing countries – are closest to the issues and the people they serve. Simavi has been bolstering the capacity of its southern counterparts for years, because we believe this increases sustainability and multiplies impact. We are delighted to see how many of them have grown into professional organisations with an audible voice in the global development community. Extensive personal contact is vital in our work to support southern CSOs. In 2015, we expanded our local presence in Indonesia and Tanzania and we hired a local programme manager in Bangladesh. In the coming years we will continue to expand our field presence, based on our long-term strategy of decentralisation.

Climate change. A growing risk of droughts and floods compromises food and water security, increases the risk of conflict and directly affects people’s health, especially those most vulnerable. WASH in particular is severely affected by climate change. Insufficient safe water wreaks havoc on sanitation and hygiene, but too much uncontrolled water is just as damaging. Simavi is responding to these challenges with innovative programmes designed to work with the changing environment. For example, in 2015 we continued to promote elevated toilet blocks, which are raised to cope with floods, and better faecal 1 See eg http://www.ids.ac.uk/go/idsproject/the-new-bottom-billion.

Strategy

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sludge management systems, which improve not only sanitation but also the soil and thus food security. We also stressed the importance of integrating WASH into wider climate adaptation programmes and funding, and we actively lobbied policy makers and donors to integrate WASH, which focuses on quality and equity, with integrated water resources management (IWRM), which focuses on resource management and allocation.

Rapid urbanisation. This rising global trend presents us with new challenges, but also opportunities. In many instances, social structures in urban and peri-urban environments are similar to those in rural areas. That means Simavi can rely on its nine decades of experience in social and community mobilisation, such as our experience in sanitation marketing. In 2015, we continued to shift our focus from primarily rural areas to a portfolio that includes urban and peri-urban areas, in order to reach the poorest of the poor (mainly people living in informal settlements or slums) through our WASH and SRHR programmes.

The rapidly growing urban population also presents us and our private partners with a market and a demand for WASH and SRHR services. In 2015, we used this factor to explore viable business models and expand our partnerships with the private sector.

1.2 Vision, mission, strategy

Although progress has been made, every day approximately 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. And nearly 663 million people in the world do not have access to improved water sources. Contaminated drinking water is estimated to cause more than 500,000 diarrhoeal deaths each year (all figures are from the World Health Organisation).

Vision Basic health In Simavi’s vision, basic health is a crucial stepping stone for building a better existence and creating a way out of poverty.

It refers to fundamental health conditions that need to be fulfilled in order to allow sustainable development; people can only go to school,

Basic health is the first step out of poverty. People can only go to school, work and contribute positively to their community when they’re healthy. That’s why we’re working towards making basic health accessible and available to all – sustainably.

We believe that everyone has the right to enjoy basic health conditions: • Safe water and adequate sanitation • Awareness on hygiene • Comprehensive sexuality education • Reproductive health care • Realisation of sexual and reproductive rights

engage in work and contribute positively to their community, when they are in good health.

Improved access to and awareness of water, sanitation and hygiene and sexual and reproductive health and rights creates a standard of hygiene, healthcare and equality that allows everybody to live productively. By tackling WASH and SRHR issues, we can stop preventable diseases and deaths and boost social and economic development

Mission Sustainable development The only way to create long-lasting change is by sustainably investing In people’s health. We focus on two areas that are vital for people to be able to lead a healthy life: water, sanitation, hygiene and sexual and reproductive health and rights. We empower communities and involve governments and the private sector to ensure everyone can use essential WASH and SRHR services, learn healthy behaviour and enjoy full sexual and reproductive rights.

Together we develop sustainable programmes that deliver lasting improvement to the health of marginalised communities in Africa and Asia.

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Strategy

Ambition It is our ambition to sustainably improve the basic health of 10 million people in marginalised communities in Africa and Asia by 2020.

Strategy Simavi’s strategy for 2014–2020 will ensure we can achieve our ambition. It is based on four integrated cornerstones: 1. The sustainable improvement of basic health; 2. Diversified financing and innovative partnerships; 3. A strong brand and transparent communication; 4. A professional organisation whose culture nourishes entrepreneurship and innovation.

These four cornerstones underpin our 2015 objectives; we elaborate on them in the next four chapters.

1.3 Core values

To help us realise our ambition, we have defined five core values that drive our decisions, state what we stand for, and describe how we work.

SUSTAINABLE: Our work is based on a long-term vision for the future. We target durable change and use an integrated, programmatic approach to achieve it.

POWERFUL: We are strong and confident, and it shows. We are proud of our daily work. We believe in people’s strength and passion.

CONNECTED: We put our hearts and souls into what we do. We cooperate intensively with others. We make a more powerful difference together.

INSPIRING: We propose new ideas and we think outside the box. We motivate each other and the partners with whom we work. We offer a stimulating, energising working environment.

JUST: We believe that everyone has the right to healthy living conditions. We respect the differences between people, cultures and organisations. We champion the right to development for every individual.

Strategy

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1.4 Our Theory of Change

WASH- and SRHR-related health problems cannot be solved by individuals or groups working alone: they require durable, long-term solutions that allow systems to be changed and stakeholders to be in regular communication. We developed our Theory of Change to ensure that everyone involved, from the community to the government, works together to realise sustainable, lasting improvement in basic health.

All our programmes are based on three integrated pillars: 1. Empower communities to demand quality services and to practice healthy behaviour.

2. Create a supportive, enabling environment in which all stakeholders are aware of their roles and responsibilities, work together and can be held accountable.

3. Ensure that people use affordable, suitable and sustainable WASH and SRHR services.

STRUCTURAL IMPROVEMENT OF BASIC HEALTH (WASH & SRHR) OF PEOPLE IN LOW INCOME AND MIDDLE INCOME COUNTRIES

IMPACT

LONG TERM OUTCOME

OUTCOME

OUTPUT

THROUGH PUT

INPUT SIMAVI

Empowered communities: including healthy behaviour of individuals

Supportive enabling environment (government, private sector, NGOs)

Utilisation of sustainable WASH and SRHR services

Active commitment of communities to stimulate healthy behaviour and maintain WASH and SRHR services

Transparent and effective collaboration between stakeholders; stakeholders act upon roles

Well managed WASH and SRHR services

People with increased knowledge and attitudes

Stakeholders know role and responsibility and act accordingly; platforms are established

WASH and SRHR services established

Capacity strengthening, evidence-based advocacy, organising platforms and dialogues

Improving and linking all WASH and SRHR service elements

Functioning WASH and SRHR community groups

Capacity strengthening, community awareness, education and demand creation

• WASH EXPERTISE • SRHR EXPERTISE • SUSTAINABILITY (FIETS) • COMMUNITY BASED APPROACH • PROJECT AND PROGRAMME MANAGEMENT • NETWORK AND PARTNERSHIPS

In chapter 2, we directly address each pillar in discussing our 2015 objectives and results.

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Strategy

Pillar 1: Empowered communities We provide communities with the awareness and tools to ensure they will demand quality services and engage in healthy behaviour.

When, for example, a young girl lacks access to safe drinking water, building a pump will not be a sufficient intervention to sustainably fulfil her right to safe water.

Lasting change requires investing in empowering communities, so that this girl and her family are fully aware of the issue, raise their voices to claim their rights, and can use the services. In addition, it is important to create an enabling environment in which every stakeholder can be held accountable for fulfilling its responsibility in achieving the girl’s right to safe water.

Ewout van Galen, Simavi’s director programmes

How does it work?

• We set up and train community groups to raise awareness on WASH and SRHR issues.

• We make communities aware of their rights, the importance of health, and how to prevent the spread of diseases.

• We make sure the voice of the community is heard and that the interests of all community members are represented.

What is the outcome?

• Communities better understand and monitor the health situation in their villages.

• People take better care of their health, by for example knowing the value of washing their hands or requesting skilled midwives to attend births.

• Communities are stimulated to partner with local stakeholders to demand adequate and sustainable services.

Pillar 2: Enabling Environment We create an environment where everyone – from local residents, to the private sector, to local, regional and national governments – is actively involved in a community’s health.

How does it work?

• We train governmental healthcare and WASH providers to make them aware of national laws and regulations and their roles and responsibilities.

• We train local craftsmen and entrepreneurs to ensure the sustainable production of WASH- and SRHR-related products and services that meet the demands of the community.

• We increase communication channels between local communities and healthcare providers to provide more effective, efficient and relevant services.

• We gather local data and evidence to share with influential national and international stakeholders.

What is the outcome?

• Stakeholders are aware it is their responsibility to deliver quality health services in line with the needs of the community.

• The local economy is boosted by work being done within the community.

• Community and local and national government stakeholders have platforms where they collaborate and discuss issues such as budget allocation for WASH facilities or the presence of skilled health providers in clinics.

• Policy makers allocate sufficient budget for WASH and SRHR in the health policies they develop.

Pillar 3: Sustainable services We ensure that good-quality WASH and SRHR services are sustainably available, affordable and accessible to the people who need them.

How does it work?

• We set up every service according to our five FIETS sustainability principles: financial, institutional, environmental, technical and social sustainability.

• We train WASH and SRHR service providers, among others, in organisational and financial management.

Strategy

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What is the outcome?

• The sustainability, quality, affordability and availability of SRHR and WASH services improves.

• Communities experience significant growth in the effective and sustainable use of WASH and SRHR services.

• The community’s basic health tangibly improves.

FIETS sustainability Our Theory of Change ensures we deliver sustainable, long lasting improvement of basic health. In addition we work according to five sustainability principles: Financial, Institutional, Environmental, Technological and Social (FIETS) sustainability. Any programme will only lead to sustainable development if all five principles have been integrated.

F i n a n c i a l s u s t a i n a b i l i t y means establishing local payment systems, working based on business models, involving the local business community and mobilising government budget locally. This is how we prevent structural dependency on donated money.

I n s t i t u t i o n a l s u s t a i n a b i l i t y in the WASH sector means that WASH systems, institutions, policies and procedures at the local and national level are functional and meet the demand of users of WASH services. All relevant parties are aware of their own roles, tasks and responsibilities. We set up alliances with these parties and we work on capacity building, policy influencing and monitoring.

E n v i r o n m e n t a l s u s t a i n a b i l i t y implies placing WASH interventions in the wider context of the natural environment.

This includes implementing an approach of integrated and sustainable management of (waste) water flows and resources.

It takes into account that WASH interventions connect to and affect the natural environment and hence impact people’s livelihood.

Te c h n o l o g i c a l s u s t a i n a b i l i t y means that the technologies we use in our work suit local needs and are adapted to the local situation. Quality, affordability and availability form a fundamental part of the decision-making process.

S o c i a l s u s t a i n a b i l i t y means that our work responds to local demands and needs and is accessible to the poor, to women and to vulnerable groups. We have a strong focus on equal rights, regardless of gender, social position, sexual preference, religion or culture.

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Strategy

1.5 Our added value

Simavi has been working to improve basic health for 90 years. Over that time we’ve built up an in-depth knowledge of what – and who – it takes to successfully implement WASH and SRHR programmes and how to keep producing positive and lasting results. These are our core competencies.

1. We have extensive expertise on WASH and SRHR. We offer our partners a unique combination of WASH and SRHR knowledge and experience, driven by a sustainable approach (as elaborated in our Theory of Change). We are able to monitor the progress of our programmes on each level of our Theory of Change.

2. We know the situation in the community.

Our work is rooted in local communities. In the many years Simavi has been active, we’ve built up an extensive network of reliable and capable local partners in the nine countries we work in. We’ve gathered a deep understanding of the religious, ethical and cultural sensitivities within every community we work with, which is vital in implementing communitybased programmes that can achieve lasting change.

We know how to build our local partners’ capacity to ensure the community’s demands are voiced to influential regional, national and international stakeholders within applicable legislative and regulatory parameters.

3. We create new synergies and partnerships.

We’ve established extensive local and international networks in WASH, SRHR and beyond.

We look to create new synergies and partnerships within our networks, bringing together partners whose expertise complements each other. We’re equally at home working with the private sector, government agencies, international foundations, knowledge organisations, CSO networks, local partner CSOs and the people using health services.

4. We know how to manage complex programmes.

We manage programmes that are designed to reach entire regions and districts. We unite organisations to create WASH and SRHR solutions together. These international alliances and consortia include multiple stakeholders and enable us to reach scale. For example, in 2015 we were the lead agency for the Dutch WASH Alliance, a five-year programme with a €45 million budget in seven countries; we coordinated Unite Against Child Marriage, a one-year, €1.3 million programme in two countries; and we continued to lead MKAJI, a sixyear, €8 million programme in Tanzania funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

5. We work on tomorrow’s solutions today We work with research partners to ensure that we continue to provide innovative and sustainable health solutions. With the Impact Centre Erasmus, we are inventorying the scientific evidence to increase our knowledge of interventions and combinations of interventions that have a proven impact on people’s health, as well as areas where research still needs to be done in order to know. This knowledge continuously feeds our programme strategy to ensure that we achieve maximum impact.

1.6 Key programme areas

Simavi focuses its work on two themes: WASH and SRHR. Improved access to and awareness of WASH and SRHR creates a standard of hygiene, healthcare and equality that allows every man, woman and child to live productively. By tackling WASH and SRHR issues, we can stop preventable diseases and deaths and boost social and economic development. We have developed specific expertise and approaches within our WASH and SRHR programmes, such as socially sustainable WASH, behaviour change communication, maternal mortality audits, safe motherhood, youth SRHR and menstrual hygiene management. You can read more about our key programme areas at http://simavi.org/thinking/key-programme-areas/.

Strategy

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2. The sustainable improvement of basic health photo: Jerry de Mars

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Strategy

In 2015 Simavi implemented a total of 120 projects in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. In these same countries, we operated in strong alliances and partnerships to sustainably improve the health of people living in marginalised communities. Our work focuses on two core themes that are integral to achieving basic health for everyone: sexual and reproductive health and rights, and water, sanitation and hygiene.

2.1 Simavi’s work on SRHR

Why SRHR matters “The right to sexual and reproductive health is not only an integral part of the general right to health but fundamentally linked to the enjoyment of many other human rights, including the rights to education, work and equality, as well as the rights to life, privacy and freedom from torture, and individual autonomy.”

— United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Unfortunately, the full enjoyment of the right to sexual and reproductive health remains a distant goal for millions of people throughout the world, especially for women and girls. Gender-based stereotypes play a role in fuelling violations of the right to sexual and reproductive health, including assumptions and expectations of women as men’s subordinates and of women’s role as only caregivers and mothers. The ability to decide whether and when to have children is critical for a woman, not only for her own health and social and economic well-being, but also that of her children, her family, and, more broadly, her community as a whole. That is why progress on SRHR is inextricably linked with larger development goals such as reducing poverty, achieving better health and ensuring equal rights for women and girls.

Simavi’s SRHR activities Following our Theory of Change, we empower communities to demand quality health services and engage in healthy behaviour when it comes to their sexual and reproductive activities, including menstrual hygiene management. We ensure sustainable services by promoting the development of equitable health and medical systems. These offer quality maternity care, including safe childbirth, prenatal and postnatal care, safe abortions, postabortion care, the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, and care and treatment for people with HIV and AIDS. In addition to creating access to these services, we ensure they are used. We also improve their quality by training health workers and other community members (including youth). This stimulates awareness and spreads information and knowledge on SRHR, which helps the community demand the quality it deserves. By building an enabling environment in which all relevant stakeholders are aware of their roles and responsibilities, Simavi helps to ensure they can be held accountable for their responsibility to provide and protect SRHR among the population at large.

Using these three interventional pillars, we seek to improve the position of women and young people by working towards a situation where they have the power to make decisions concerning their lives and health. Positive male involvement is an area of specific attention, because in most communities decision-making is a male privilege. Their involvement in promoting SRHR for women and girls is crucial.

Simavi’s SRHR programmes in 2015 In 2015 our SRHR team worked hard to develop policies and position papers that explain Simavi’s views on specific SRHR-related topics. We now have a renewed SRHR policy, a gender equality policy, a position paper on sexual diversity, and a position wpaper on HIV and AIDS. These specifications of our views are well reflected in the development of new programmes that took place in 2015.

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In 2015 Simavi invested in SRHR through five large programmes: • The Simavi Community Health programme • The Unite for Body Rights programme (UFBR) • The Access to Services and Knowledge programme (ASK) • The Unite Against Child Marriage programme (UACM) • The Making Periods Normal programme (MPN) The ASK, UFBR and UACM programmes all completed in 2015. We discuss our concrete programme results in section 2.3, and our SRHR advocacy work in section 2.4. In section 2.5.1 we highlight our UFBR programme in a case study.

2.2 Simavi’s work on WASH

Why WASH matters Access to drinking water and sanitation is a human right and a basic condition for a healthy life. There is a wealth of evidence that the use of safe WASH services contributes strongly to a general improvement in health status. Safe water, adequate sanitation and hygienic behaviour reduce the incidence of many communicable waterrelated diseases, as well as mortality rates. Unfortunately, access to safe drinking water and sanitation is distributed unequally in the world. There is inequality between urban and rural areas, slums and formal settlements, men and women, disadvantaged groups and the general population. As of today, nearly 663 million people worldwide still use unsafe drinking water and 2.4 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation facilities. Lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene remains one of the world’s most urgent health issues.

In addition, improved health and WASH contribute to other development objectives.

For example, adequate WASH services help to ensure inclusive, quality education for all and promote lifelong access, as pupils with good health are better learners, and dropout rates among school-going girls decrease. WASH access is also crucial to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. Several studies and stakeholders stress the economic benefits of WASH, and provide evidence that every cent invested in WASH yields a high economic benefit at both the micro and macro levels, thanks to reduced water fetching time, reduced time caring for the sick, reduced morbidity, reduced mortality rates, reduced health care expenditures, a stronger and more productive labour force, and longer lives.

Simavi’s WASH activities In line with our Theory of Change, we aim to support and empower communities to improve their health and WASH status through an integrated package of interventions.

We use participatory methodologies, starting with a problem analysis. We organise health and hygiene education, behaviour change communication and awarenessraising activities.

In order to create an enabling environment, we support our partner organisations in influencing district WASH policies, planning and practices. We also support the establishment of local advocacy mechanisms. These promote dialogue and accountability between the people who use the services, civil society organisations, government agencies and public or private service providers.

We also work to create sustainable services. We identify actions that will lead to solutions that fit with the community’s priorities. We then implement and evaluate these solutions. By doing so, we help increase communities’ capacity to organise themselves, to understand their health problems, to know how to reduce health risks, to articulate their needs and demands, and to manage communal WASH facilities in order to ensure their operation and maintenance for a long time to come.

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Simavi’s WASH programmes in 2015 In 2015 Simavi invested in WASH through five large programmes: • The Dutch WASH Alliance programme • The Ghana Netherlands WASH programme • The MKAJI programme • The Football for Water programme • The Sanitation, Hygiene and Water programme (SHAW) The SHAW programme and the Dutch WASH Alliance were scheduled to end in 2015; we were able to acquire bridge funding to continue the alliance in 2016. We discuss our concrete programme results in section 2.3, and our WASH advocacy work in section 2.4. In section 2.5.2 we highlight the Dutch WASH Alliance in a case study.

2.3 Concrete programme results in 2015

Outputs and outcomes Simavi uses the following terminology to describe our programme results: An output is an immediate result directly generated by a programme intervention, such as the number of healthcare workers trained to provide youth-friendly health services. In contrast, outcomes and long-term outcomes reflect changes in behaviour and policy. For example, the long-term result of training the healthcare workers (in combination with other activities) is that young people are more satisfied with the services they receive in health clinics because they feel adequately listened to and helped. While the programme is in direct control of the number and quality of the training sessions (output), the effect in terms of improved youth services (outcome) and youth behaviour (long-term outcome) does not lie within our sphere of control and can only be affected indirectly.

Within the Sustainable Services pillar we measure for example the impact of improving services INPUT

OUTPUT

OUTCOME

LONG TERM OUTCOME

Activity

Immediate result

Result after two years

Sustainable result

We train health workers to make services in health centres more youth and female friendly.

We record the number of people trained and specific training topics.

We record the number of health centres that have improved the access and quality of their services.

We measure how many people are actively using the services, for example by going to the clinic to give birth,instead of delivering at home with a traditional birth attendant.

Outputs are easy to measure every year, while outcomes require greater effort. To measure outcomes, we use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies such as interviews with resource people, surveys, focused group discussions, and the analysis of secondary data. Because outcomes can only be perceived after two or more years and are more difficult to quantify, we only measure them every two to three years. This means that we can expect our output figures to be comparable between years, while the outcomes we measure across the total Simavi portfolio are likely to fluctuate from one year to another.

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As we described in section 1.4, all our programmes are based on the three integrated pillars of our Theory of Change, in order to realise lasting improvement: 1. Empower communities to demand quality services and to practice healthy behaviour.

2. Create a supportive, enabling environment in which all stakeholders are aware of their roles and responsibilities, work together and can be held accountable.

3. Ensure that people use affordable, suitable and sustainable WASH and SRHR services.

The table on the following page provides insight into a set of outputs and outcomes per pillar for our programmes. The bulk of these results were achieved in our four largest programmes: the Ghana Netherlands WASH Programme (GNWP), the Dutch WASH Alliance, Unite for Body Rights (UFBR), and Access to Services and Knowledge (ASK). These programmes all ended in 2015, and therefore their long-term results (outcomes) were measured this year to evaluate the programmes’ success.

Major 2015 programme results Appendix 1 provides a complete list of all the indicators we measured in 2015, including a breakdown of the results for each of our programmes.

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Targets and results

Target

Results

Level of accomplishment

EMPOWERED COMMUNITIES # people directly reached with education on SRHR/WASH

2,394,099

4,781,634

output

# people reached through mass media on SRHR/WASH

9,832,412 29,265,968

output

107,677

168,859

long-term outcome

5,731,911

4,178,966

outcome

1,655

2,388

output

# times social accountability* tool applied

79

125

outcome

# of policies showing progress on SRHR/ WASH or # countries with increased SRHR/ WASH budget

13

15

long-term outcome

118

222

output

# people utilising SRHR/WASH services and facilities

2,229,935

2,347,715

long-term outcome

# people with access to SRHR/WASH services

6,749,382 19,985,083

outcome

# people with healthier behaviour # women who know SRH measures ENABLING ENVIRONMENT # people who learned about social accountability or trained on policy influencing

# of networks and platforms of which our partner organisations are a member SUSTAINABLE SERVICES

13,761

9,495

output

# public places with improved WASH facilities

366

442

output

# water points2 rehabilitated or constructed

446

377

output

# toilets3 in public places

420

425

output

# health workers trained

* The glossary as well as the box in this paragraph provide an explanation of what social accountability entails.

2 A water point is a standard WASH term for a source of safe water. Examples include watering holes, rainwater harvesting tanks, and wells.

3 Here, “toilet� is a broader WASH term for an individual point where a person can hygienically urinate or defecate. Examples include dry toilets, urinals, communal latrines, and flush toilets.

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Pillar 1: Empowered communities In line with our Theory of Change and our results in previous years, Simavi’s work in 2015 increased knowledge of and improved attitudes towards SRHR and WASH. Just like last year, we reached around 5 million people with direct education on WASH or SRHR or both, which is double what we’d projected4. The vast majority of these (4.5 million) were reached through our SRHR programmes, and specifically via one partner in Kenya which was successful in working through the local authorities; our WASH programmes reached roughly 300,000 people. This was less than the 400,000 planned because in the last year of the Dutch WASH Alliance programme, the focus shifted from training in awareness-raising to training in lobby and advocacy. Going forward, people’s healthy behaviours will be sustained by an enabling environment (see below).

We educate people on SRHR and WASH by training local residents to serve as community representatives. These peer educators can be consulted by others and serve as role models in the community. They are key people in the empowerment process, which starts with sensitisation and knowledge. These individuals — nearly 50,000 in our SRHR programmes and nearly 9,500 in our WASH programmes – are included in this result.

In addition to directly providing information, we often use the mass media to convey messages on SRHR and WASH. In 2015 Simavi reached almost 30 million people through mass media.

This is three times more than planned, since we were able to conduct more campaigns than projected and because our successful campaigns were publicised by other media. Our WASH programmes reached nearly 19 million people, most of them via the Dutch WASH Alliance. Our SRHR programmes reached more than 10 million people.

Education and awareness creation are two key elements in effecting behavioural change, such as visiting a prenatal care provider or using a latrine. The UBFR and ASK programmes reported that more than 4 million women had acquired vital SRHR knowledge as a result of the programmes’ interventions, and the Dutch WASH Alliance reported that nearly 169,000 people had adopted healthier sanitary behaviours in their daily lives. These major long-term achievements are due to the success of several programmes implemented over the past couple of years (UFBR, ASK and DWA).

Pillar 2: Enabling environment In the final year of the larger programmes SHAW and DWA, we focused on creating an enabling environment in order to enhance the sustainability of the results. We are therefore pleased to note that we exceeded all our targets in this category. In 2015 we had planned to train around 1,600 people to influence policy or exert social accountability through our WASH programmes; we actually trained almost 2,400 because these topics received more attention in the final phase of the programmes. Of the 2,400 people trained, 1,500 were trained in the context of the Dutch WASH Alliance, against a target of 1,300. This training led to 125 applications of a social accountability tool, a powerful instrument in making citizens’ voices heard by those who bear the duty to provide services. Our lobbying and advocacy efforts led in 15 instances to improvements in WASH or SRHR policies or increased WASH or SRHR budgets, a rewardingly concrete long-term result from what are often long and winding processes.

Because advocacy is crucial for sustainable change yet often escapes easy quantification, we dedicate section 2.4 to an in-depth discussion of our SRHR and WASH advocacy efforts in 2015.

4 The 2015 targets were too conservative, which is why we are currently revising the way we set targets and improving our partners’ capacity to report more precise targets in 2016.

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Pillar 3: Sustainable services Almost 2.4 million people were reported to be utilising SRHR and WASH services and facilities in 20155. This achievement is a success indicator that reflects not only the accessibility of services and facilities but also the changed behaviour of people who now recognise the importance of these services for their health. Almost half of this number was reported by the ASK alliance, and specifically reflects women reporting that they had received their fourth prenatal care check-up, thereby monitoring the health of their babies and themselves.

Our target for creating access to WASH and SRHR services was 6.7 million people; we actually provided access for 20 million, primarily people with access to contraceptives, which is part of the UFBR and ASK programmes. The number achieved far exceeds our target due to inconsistencies in how targets were set and how results were measured6. Our WASH programmes created access to sanitation facilities for almost 200,000 people (target 113,000), an unexpectedly high figure that reflects the success of awareness-raising activities throughout the programmes’ duration. Thanks to changed attitudes and behaviours, many more people constructed latrines than we had expected in this final programme year.

Our SRHR programmes fell short of their target to train health workers. The discrepancy is largely due to the doubling of efforts in countries such as India and Malawi, where the UACM and UFBR programmes were both active, and Kenya, where the ASK and UFBR programmes were both active. Though each programme had set independent training targets, it was unnecessary to double-train the same health workers.

Our WASH programmes exceeded their targets for improved WASH facilities and number of toilets in public places. The number of water points to be rehabilitated or constructed fell short of our goal, a slight setback caused by delays in finalising the underlying infrastructure.

5 Because a person may be using multiple WASH and SRHR services, this number may include the same individuals more than once.

6 It appears that our in-country partners count the number of people when setting targets but the number of services when measuring results. That leads to double counting, because consultations are often combined with handing out contraceptives. In our new programmes, we will focus on aligning our partners’ target setting and result measurement methods.

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2.4 Our 2015 advocacy work

2.4.1 Global advocacy The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations in September represented a critically important milestone for SRHR. The SDGs’ predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted in 2000, completely omitted reproductive health, and it took a sustained campaign by SRHR advocates to add a reproductive health target in 2007. Specific attention to the SRHR needs of young people, including youthfriendly services, meaningful engagement and comprehensive sexuality education, were missing throughout the post-2015 agenda.

Continuing on our efforts in 2014, Simavi joined the SRHR Alliance and the broader SRHR and women’s rights community in advocating for inclusion of these items in the indicators for SDGs 3 (health), 4 (education) and 5 (gender equality) – in particular under the SRHRrelated targets 3.7 and 5.6 – as well as in the Opening Declaration. Simavi co-authored position papers and briefings to the Dutch Parliament and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to strengthen the Dutch position and signed international letters and petitions. In addition, Simavi organised a side event on the importance of specific attention to youth SRHR in the SDGs during the 48th session of the Commission on Population and Development, together with the government of Ghana and Simavi’s country partners from Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda. Thanks to these and many other advocacy actions, references to the International Conference on Population and Development and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women are now included in the Opening Declaration, and adolescents are specifically mentioned in the indicators for target 5.6. Unfortunately, the other items did not make it into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 3.7, 4.7 and 5.6.

Source text: Guttmacher Institute’s report

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But while the SDGs are comprehensive, visionary and inspiring in many ways, they are also limited in the scope of SRHR issues they address7. As a result, the SDG indicators are unlikely to include certain critically important elements of SRHR, including safe abortion care, non-discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and the need for highquality, confidential and timely sexual and reproductive health services. Simavi will continue to advocate with other Dutch and international advocates to prevent the strong indicators from being weakened or deleted by conservative governments.

In 2015, we also continued to advocate for the proper inclusion of both hygiene and WASH in schools and health facilities in the SDGs and indicators. SDG 6 is dedicated to water and sanitation. However, hygiene was not originally included as an indicator for target 6.2. Thanks to a successful campaign by WASH organisations united under the umbrella of the Global Public Private Partnership on Handwashing, including Simavi, hygiene is now included as an indicator.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 6.2.

Source text: Guttmacher Institute’s report

WASH in schools was included in the SDGs from the beginning, thanks to years of advocacy by influential organisations such as UNICEF and WaterAid. Unfortunately, the inclusion of WASH in healthcare facilities hasn’t made it into the indicator framework thus far. Most probably this is because few organisations have advocated for it, amid other aspects that many organisations are working to get into the health-related indicators. Simavi will continue to advocate for WASH in healthcare facilities in 2016.

Simavi has also identified menstrual hygiene – a cross-cutting theme with a large impact on the health and well-being of women and girls – as an overlooked issue in both the SRHR and WASH SDGs. Since June 2015, Simavi has also been advocating for its inclusion, and we will continue working on this in 2016.

Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health The UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health was launched in 2010 to accelerate progress towards achieving MDGs 4 and 5 – reducing child and maternal mortality and achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health. The Global Strategy ended when the MDGs did, and – given that MDGs 4 and 5 had not been achieved – an urgency was felt to renew and update it. In 2015 Simavi continued to advocate, jointly with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion, and the larger SRHR community, for the inclusion of SRHR to the fullest extent possible in this Global Strategy 2.0.

Sanitation and Water for All The global Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) partnership agreed on its new strategy in 2015.

Thanks to effective lobbying by Simavi and other partners, hygiene was ultimately included 7 See the Guttmacher Institute’s report at http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/SRHR-Indicators-Post-2015Recommendations.pdf.

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in SWA’s vision, despite its absence from the first proposal. Simavi used its strong network in the partnership, both at home in the Netherlands and in Bangladesh and Malawi, to achieve this. The inclusion of hygiene in SWA’s vision is a major success that will be important for the global WASH sector in the future.

SWA’s partnership meeting took place in November in The Hague. Simavi set up and facilitated a session for civil society organisations during the meeting, which was very well attended. Simavi also facilitated a dinner for the partnership’s attending CSOs, along with WASH advocates from the US. SWA positions itself strongly as the monitoring platform for SDG 6, making it an important platform for Simavi to continue to be active in in 2016.

2.4.2 Advocacy in the Netherlands Sustainable finance for WASH and SRHR With the SRHR Alliance, we advocated to sustain or increase the percentage of total Dutch official development assistance going to SRHR. We also jointly advocated to make the SRHR budget transparent and ensure it is spent effectively and on the priorities identified by the Netherlands’ government itself (see sidebar) and endorsed by the SRHR alliance. In 2015 no important cuts were made in the Dutch government’s budget for SRHR; the budget did decrease slightly from €415 million (in 2014) to €386 million, but without negative impact. In 2016, the budget will increase again to about €416 million.

The Dutch government’s SRHR priorities: 1. Increased SRHR knowledge and choice for young people.

2. Increased access to contraception and medicines.

3. Increased pre- and postnatal health care as well as care during delivery, including safe abortion.

4. Increased respect for the sexual and reproductive rights of groups from whom these rights are being withheld.

We also advocated for sustainable and better-targeted finance for WASH and for innovative financing of WASH services. In April, the Dutch minister for foreign trade and development cooperation, Lilianne Ploumen, announced a new commitment to provide 50 million people with access to proper sanitation and 30 million people with access to clean drinking water by 2030. This was her first commitment with respect to the SDGs. Simavi used the momentum to align with other WASH-related CSOs in the Netherlands Water Partnership to come up with 11 recommendations on how to achieve this new commitment, which were sent to Minister Ploumen. She invited us to discuss the recommendations in person. Three representatives of the Water Partnership including Simavi will meet with the minister in February 2016.

It was difficult to propel water and sanitation onto the agendas of Dutch parliamentarians in 2015. Due to the refugee crisis in Europe, a quarter of the budget for development cooperation was spent on the reception of refugees in the Netherlands, and the topic dominated many of the discussions on development cooperation. Anticipating this, Simavi worked with Partos (the Dutch association of CSOs working in international development) to keep WASH in the conversation. An important result of this joint advocacy was Minister Ploumen’s agreement to spend at least 25% of the development cooperation budget via civil society organisations.

During a high-level side event at the International Conference on Financing for Development held in Addis Ababa in July, Minister Ploumen signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with the European Investment Bank to support water and sanitation projects.

This was a major WASH success, following two years of joint advocacy with Vitens Evides 30

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International and Royal HaskoningDHV. Building on our 2014 efforts, we worked to improve the balance between funding via multilateral organisations and via civil society. Our plea to be more transparent about who receives funding for what reason and about the impact achieved by that organisation was picked up by several members of Parliament, who asked for an improvement in transparency in the debate on multilateral organisations and for increased funding via civil society in the debate on the 2016 budget. This debate resulted in a slight increase in SRHR budget for civil society at the expense of multilateral organisations. Nonetheless, at the end of 2015 the overall budget for multilateral organisations remained high and transparency was still low. We will therefore continue working on this issue in 2016.

Influencing political platforms towards the 2017 elections In March 2017 – or earlier, should the current Dutch government fall before that time – the next general elections will take place in the Netherlands. In 2015, all political parties started drafting their election platforms. Working with the SRHR Alliance, Partos and WO=MEN, Simavi began identifying the content we would like to see addressed in each party’s platform.

With Partos, we contributed to a three-page briefing on development cooperation in general, including references to WASH and SRHR. With the SRHR Alliance, we analysed SRHR-specific content in previous election platforms and formulated party-specific suggestions for SRHR content to be included in this year’s platforms. Both processes will continue in 2016.

2.4.3 In-country advocacy In-country support for WASH and SRHR at the institutional and political level is very important. In many developing countries, national frameworks and policies are quite well defined; however, the decentralisation of responsibilities and tasks to local governments is often accompanied by insufficient decentralisation of funding, capacities, information and decision-making mandate. In order to create an enabling environment – the second pillar of our Theory of Change – we support our partner organisations in carrying out local lobbying and advocacy activities, in order to influence these mechanisms.

In 2015, we saw an increase in our local SRHR partners’ participation in networks, mostly under the Unite Against Child Marriage alliance. The theme of child marriage receives much attention internationally, and our partners in India and Malawi took the opportunity to network and combine strengths in their advocacy messages around the rights of young women to decide themselves when and whom to marry.

About 1,300 times in total, representatives of the communities or partners we work with attended meetings in which they could advocate for improved WASH for the group they represent. This generated concrete progress in nine WASH-related laws and 11 policies, and in four countries we noted an increased allocation in WASH budget from the government side. These results are more or less as expected.

In total, our in-country SRHR partners were represented at advocacy meetings 670 times. This is less than planned, in part because our three main programmes came to a close this year which shifted local advocacy efforts somewhat into the future. We have noted this as a lesson learned in realistic planning.

2.4.4 Linking in-country, national and global advocacy It is vital that our advocacy efforts in the Netherlands and internationally reinforce the advocacy efforts of our in-country partners. We are therefore constantly sharing information on global advocacy processes, ensuring the inclusion of our in-country partners in The sustainable improvement of basic health

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international platforms and networks, and asking our partners to share their needs, messages and successes, so that we can integrate them into our Dutch and international advocacy.

Where possible, we physically link these different levels of advocacy. In 2015, we were able to do this on four occasions. In April, Simavi facilitated the participation of five partner organisations in the 48th Commission on Population and Development, two of whom were elected as civil society delegates for their countries’ delegations. In July, one of these partners was again the civil society delegate for its country’s delegation during the intergovernmental negotiations on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In August, Simavi’s Ugandan partner organisation FLEP and other members of the SRHR Alliance welcomed the Dutch Parliament’s Foreign Trade and Development Commission to its office, winning their hearts and minds for SRHR by sharing concrete messages and results. And in September, Simavi partners from Ghana and Kenya were able to do the same by sharing their messages during the SRHR Alliance event About a Girl held in The Hague. During this event, the SRHR Alliance launched a call to action, asking members of Parliament to ensure the achievement of SDGs 3 and 5. As a result, five members of Parliament from different political parties are now officially “SDG 3 & 5 watchdogs”.

We also engaged six SRHR partners from Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, and Uganda in international advocacy in 2015, through a capacity-building initiative for joint advocacy towards the 48th Commission on Population and Development. The objective was to strengthen these partners’ ability to influence international SRHR processes, and specifically the SDGs (read more about our advocacy work regarding the SDGs in section 2.4.1).

A new effort for Simavi in 2015 was the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The UPR is a process that reviews the human rights situation on the ground in every UN member state every 4.5 years. Civil society organisations can contribute by providing specific information on how people are affected by the laws and policies in their country.

Our UPR efforts began with a workshop in Uganda in the fall of 2015, with 20 representatives from Ugandan CSOs linked to our partner CEHURD. We then developed a training protocol that can be used in two ways. Trainers can use it to build or enhance their own understanding of the UPR process, and to guide partner CSOs in engaging with the UPR. Our document provides guidelines, methodologies and resources to meet the learning needs of both the trainer and partner CSOs. Going forward, we intend to train more of our partners on the UPR process in order to put women’s health rights more strongly on the global agenda.

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2.5 Programme case studies

Through its Unite for Body Rights programme (2011-2015), the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) Alliance worked in nine countries in Africa and Asia towards a society free of poverty, where all women and men, girls and boys, including marginalised groups, have the same rights. photo: Raymond Rutting

Read more on: http://simavi.org/whatwe-do/programmes/ unite-for-body-rightsufbr/

2.5.1 Case study: The Unite for Body Rights programme

The SRHR Alliance was established in 2011 to meet a requirement of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ MFS II funding framework. The alliance comprises five Dutch organisations8 and approximately 50 partner organisations who form local SRHR alliances in their respective countries. From 2011 through 2015, the alliance ran the Unite for Body Rights (UFBR) programme in nine countries in Africa and Asia: Ethiopia, Uganda, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kenya, India, Bangladesh, Malawi and Tanzania. Simavi was active in the last five of these.

Result areas. Following the MS II framework, the programme targeted four priority result areas: i) strengthening civil society, ii) achieving the Millennium Development Goals, iii) developing southern partner organisations’ capacity, and iv) international lobbying and advocacy.

Budget. The programme’s total five-year budget was nearly €45 million. Of this, Simavi received €8.9 million, including just over €2 million in 2015.

Evaluation. After it completed, the programme was evaluated by the International Centre for Reproductive Health at Ghent University in Belgium and Kaleidos Research at the NCDO Foundation in the Netherlands. We share some of their findings below.

Strategies. The programme targeted young people (10–24) and women using three combined strategies: • Improving access to and quality of SRHR education (increasing SRHR demand).

• Improving access to and quality of SRH services (increasing SRH supply).

• Improving the enabling environment (increasing SRHR support).

8 The SRHR Alliance’s Dutch members are Rutgers WPF (lead), AMREF Flying Doctors, CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality, dance4life and Simavi.

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By providing good-quality SRHR education (strategy 1) both in and outside schools, UFBR empowered young people and women to make healthy and well-informed decisions. That, in turn, increased demand for youth- and woman-friendly SRH services. To meet that demand, the programme bolstered the provision of quality public and private SRH services that are accessible, acceptable and affordable (strategy 2). To create broad community support for female and adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights, UFBR implemented community sensitisation, participation and mobilisation activities (strategy 3). The programme also engaged in lobbying and advocacy to facilitate the creation of supportive policies and laws.

In addition to its programmatic activities, UFBR developed a learning agenda that included two research questions: one on the multicomponent approach, and one on mainstreaming sexual diversity and preventing sexual and gender-based violence.

Mainstreaming sexual and gender diversity Day in and day out, SRHR organisations around the world work with marginalised groups: people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex; people living with HIV or AIDS; and survivors of sexual violence. In many countries, these people’s voices are not heard.

They face discrimi¬nation, exclusion and stigmatisation, and as a result are excluded from the public debate. Studies have found that non-cisgender and non-heterosexual men and women are more often in poor health (including mental health), and there is evidence of more suicides, greater substance abuse, a higher degree of victimisation and riskier sexual behaviour than in the general population or in comparable cisgender and hete¬rosexual groups.

That means it is essential to help SRHR organisations learn how to include these marginalised groups in the communities we serve. Only by sensitising ourselves to the issues these groups face and gaining the experience, information, attitudes and skills necessary to address them we will be able to reach our wider goals of ensuring sexual and reproductive health and rights for all.

To that end, as part of UFBR the SRHR Alliance created a learning agenda designed to answer this question: “What are successful approaches towards mainstreaming sexual diversity and gender identity in SRHR interventions?”

The result was a publication called Building Bridges Towards Mainstreaming of Sexual and Gender Diversity in SRHR Organisations: Lessons Learned in Africa and Asia9. This publication reflects the work of highly motivated, courageous and mostly non-LGBT changemakers who have proven to be strong advocates and frontliners in the quest towards acceptance for all. It shows the tools deve¬loped, the results achieved and the lessons learned by SRHR alliances (including Simavi) in Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania as they helped their organisations and networks include and support sexual and gender diversity.

9 You can read the publication online at http://simavi.org/quick-read/mainstreaming-sexual-and-gender-diversity-in-srhr/

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Theory of change. The SRHR Alliance’s theory of change is based on the conviction that all three elements (supply, demand, and support) must be addressed to realise effective results.

This aligns closely with Simavi’s three-pillar Theory of Change, which we adopted in 2014 (see section 1.4).

In the rest of this case study, we share the programme’s activities and accomplishments through the lens of Simavi’s participation using the three pillars of Simavi’s Theory of Change.

photo: Geert Snoeijer

Simavi pillar 1: Empowered communities SRHR and CSE education. UFBR used two key strategies to improve the availability and quality of SRHR information. First, we worked to include comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in the national or district school curriculum, and we trained peer educators to provide CSE to adult members of their communities. Second, we trained peer educators to provide comprehensive SRHR information to their communities.

The UFBR evaluation showed that integrating SRHR into school curricula was crucial for two reasons: to ensure broad support for addressing SRHR at school and to ensure that goodquality SRHR information reached the students. The effectiveness of this strategy is highly dependent on the involvement of local and national governments and on parental and community acceptance of CSE’s value. While alliance partner Rutgers WPF focused primarily on schools and teachers, Simavi and its partners focused primarily on fostering community acceptance of CSE’s value. This combined effort produced good results.

Analysis of previous interventions show that community members are more receptive to SRHR information when it is provided by their peers. This use of peer educators is therefore considered an effective strategy for the dissemination of SRHR information.

Young people were engaged in Simavi’s UFBR work on several levels. They served as peer educators, supported the provision of youth-friendly services, and participated in outreach and awareness-raising activities. Thanks to the skills and confidence acquired through their meaningful involvement in every aspect of the educational programme, from design through implementation, these young people are now taking greater ownership of not only their own health, but also SRHR-positive interventions at the local, regional and even national levels.

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“When I was 15, a nurse came to my school to tell us about the services the youth centre provided. A day before her visit, I had my very first period. I was afraid to tell my mom, so I used pieces of cloth and tissue paper that I stole from my school. From the nurse’s visit I learned that using tissue paper and rags could give me an infection. Out of curiosity I went to the youth centre and registered as a member. There I received free sanitary napkins, free counselling and other helpful services.

“The centre is also training me to be computer literate. In turn, I am able to teach other kids to use a computer. We’ve also turned our centre into an income-generating activity by typing, printing, scanning and offering internet services to the community.

“The programme has also helped me understand many issues related to sexual and reproductive health and rights. We have learned about teenage pregnancy, dropping out of school, drugs and substance abuse, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and AIDS, advocacy and even leadership and governance. These trainings have been of so much importance to me. I am now able to think and reason without others dictating what I can and cannot do. I am also able to overcome the challenges affecting me, and I am in a position to help my friends with the challenges they face.

Before, I used to be shy, and unable to talk in front of people, but now I am able to create a rapport with others, especially my fellow youths. I know how to take good care of myself, and I am able to advocate for our rights.”

— A 17-year-old UFBR participant in Kenya

Simavi pillar 2: Enabling environment Building partner capacity. UFBR worked to increase collaboration, networking capacity and the sharing of SRHR knowledge among its in-country partner organisations. This aspect of the programme was highly valued by all five Simavi countries participating in UFBR, and in most of them, the collaboration between SRHR partners became much stronger.

Three factors contributed to effective in-country collaboration. First, a good mix of partners encouraged mutual learning. For example, the alliance in Tanzania included a research institute; the other partners benefited directly from their monitoring and evaluation capacity and indirectly from their operational research. Second, the establishment of mechanisms for formal interaction and joint planning ensured good working relationships and a better understanding of SRHR-related issues. These mechanisms included regular progress meetings (eg Malawi), memorandums of understanding (eg Tanzania), advisory committee meetings (eg Malawi), and learning visits (most countries). Third, the national programme coordinator often played an important role in keeping the alliance active, though this was not the case in every country.

Thanks to all this, Simavi’s partners reported greater SRHR awareness and capacity and increased confidence among staff to work on specific SRHR issues.

Influencing policy and legislation. In most countries, joint lobbying and advocacy are demonstrably more effective than disparate efforts by individual organisations. Through the national alliance, our partners were able to combine their efforts to change policy, which increased their ability to be heard and to resist political pressure. As a result, our in-country partners were able to better influence policy, put SRHR higher on national agendas and reach more people.

At the national level, joint advocacy by our Tanzanian alliance members ensured the country’s new education and training policy supported girls’ return to school after pregnancy.

Our Kenyan alliance participated in the revision of the country’s adolescent sexual and reproductive health policy. At the district level, our advocacy efforts concentrated on the inclusion of CSE in school curricula and the provision of youth-friendly services. Prompted by our Malawi alliance’s advocacy efforts, district education managers allocated increased 36

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funding for teacher SRHR training. In Bangladesh our advocacy efforts focused on including SRHR in district CSE curricula.

Involving the community. Local leaders were considered a key enabling factor in creating an SRHR-friendly environment, as they are key stakeholders in cultural values and social norms. In Malawi and Tanzania, local leaders helped enact bylaws supporting prenatal care and keeping girls in school; however, the extent to which these bylaws actually change community behaviour is still unclear. Conversely, in some communities in Kenya and Malawi, local leaders were considered a barrier to the programme’s effective implementation, because of their negative attitudes towards SRHR.

Simavi pillar 3: Sustainable services Improving use. Simavi’s partners reported that it was crucial to participate in the provision of health services to be able to cater to the increased demand created by the other components of the UFBR programme. Our main strategy here was to offer an integrated package of essential services, which turned out to be very effective.

In existing health facilities where there was enough space, a designated youth desk or corner served as the triage point for young people seeking SRHR services and information. From here they were referred to staff members who had been trained to provide youth-friendly, non-stigmatising services. In some cases, these services were offered by standalone facilities that served young people exclusively. The most commonly provided services included HIV testing and counselling, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, the distribution of contraceptives, and the distribution of information, education and communication materials. Often, these places also served as youth resource centres where young people could interact with each other in a safe environment.

Referrals to public health facilities and the community-based distribution of contraceptives and other essential commodities were also effective approaches for increasing access to SRH services.

The use of village health volunteers was another successful outreach strategy. These trained volunteers were able to both provide access to SRHR information and persuade young people to use youth-friendly SRH services. In some countries, their engagement also increased parental support for these services.

Healthcare facility renovation viewed as less effective According to the online survey conducted by the independent evaluators after the UFBR programme ended, the renovation of existing health facilities to include youthfriendly services was considered one of the least useful strategies of UFBR’s SRH service component. The challenges of engaging with contractors as well as budget constraints are factors that probably influenced this opinion Improving quality. UFBR’s main strategy here was to train healthcare providers, including community health volunteers. While this is likely to have increased the quality of some health services and was therefore effective, the sustainability of this strategy is unclear because of the high turnover of trained staff. Instead of providing training to a select number of service providers, it may be more effective to include training on youth-friendly service provision in the formal curriculum of nurses and physicians.

Simavi’s strategy in India of using scorecards to monitor service bottlenecks and provide an opportunity to discuss them with service providers showed impressive results. The independent final evaluation mentioned them as a programme success. And in Tanzania, Simavi appointed SRHR focal persons at health facilities to improve data collection and service documentation.

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Overwhelming success in India In India, many new government health facilities became operational during UFBR’s lifetime, which was unexpected – but welcome, as it gave Simavi the chance to collect significant data on our interventions. photo: Prabuddha Paul

We measured the use of SRHR services at the start and end of the project using health management information system data and a triangulated knowledge-attitude-practice study. Service availability and use increased dramatically, ranging from a fourfold increase in delivery by skilled birth attendants to a ninefold increase in prenatal consultations. The total number of all SRHR services increased sixfold. Innovations such as the use of mobile health applications for frontline health workers contributed to this behavioural change.

We systematically monitored a sample of 197 health facilities for quality improvement in youth-friendly services and 77 facilities for improvement in maternal services and recorded solid improvements in all 274 facilities (100%).

We conducted satisfaction interviews in 24 facilities after implementing SRHR outreach services; in all 24 (100%) women expressed improved satisfaction.

Improvements were observed in all 18 health facilities where essential stocks were monitored throughout the programme’s lifetime. By the start of 2014, a larger basket of contraceptive supplies was observed in 87.5% of the selected facilities, and by the end of 2015, all 18 facilities (100%) had increased the choice of contraceptives.

In short, the project outperformed our targets for all our service outcome indicators, quality improved at every health facility, and service utilisation increased dramatically.

However, we note that many SRHR-related activities were non-existent when the programme started. Moreover, most facilities had not yet reached their maximum score in our monitoring system at the programme’s end, indicating that there was still room for quality improvement.

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2.5.2. Case study: The Dutch WASH Alliance programme Read more on: http://simavi.org/whatwe-do/programmes/ dutch-wash-alliance/

The five-year Dutch WASH Alliance programme (2011–2015) worked in eight countries in Africa and Asia to increase sustainable access to safe water and sanitation services and improved hygiene practices for women and marginalised groups.

The Dutch WASH Alliance (DWA) was established in 2009. It comprises six Dutch

organisations10, six northern thematic partners11, and close to 90 southern partner organisations in eight countries in Africa and Asia: Mali, Benin, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal and Ghana. In these countries, country coordinators assist the formation of formal and informal local WASH alliances. Simavi was active in the last five countries.

Result areas. Following the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affair’s MS II funding framework, the programme targeted four priority result areas: i) strengthening civil society, ii) achieving the Millennium Development Goals, iii) developing southern partner organisations’ capacity, and iv) international lobbying and advocacy.

Budget. The programme’s total five-year budget was €45.5 million. Of this, Simavi received €15.4 million, including €2 million for programme management.

Evaluation. In 2015 an external team of consultants analysed the DWA’s track record to validate the extent to which the implemented approaches have contributed to sustainable water and sanitation services. The report concluded that the alliance functions well as a group of partners that complement each other, and in that sense the DWA is more than the sum of its parts. The evaluators also noted that the DWA’s members, including local partners, have a very clear focus and understanding of the different elements that comprise the concept of sustainability. Last but not least, the evaluation concluded that the complementarity provided by a plethora of sustainable interventions works, and that the alliance’s decentralised approach creates ownership, builds capacity and brings energy and innovation.

In addition, the validation study also identified several challenges: 10 The alliance’s Dutch members are Akvo, Amref, ICCO, RAIN, WASTE and Simavi (lead).

11 The alliance’s thematic partners are Wetlands International, IRC, WaterAid, Both ENDS, the PRACTICA Foundation and RUAF.

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The in-country alliances are not set up to achieve scale. Few mechanisms are in place to reach policy makers or large-scale investors.

• The quality of the interventions (eg community-led total sanitation) is uneven.

• Country-led alliances need to balance growth with quality.

• A detailed and transparent approach to developing unit costs should be created and costs should be added to the strategy in the causal pathways.

• The DWA’s theory of change approach is regarded as an academic construct not related to practical work. It makes assumptions that are not explicit (eg the capacity of the state). The specific pathways of change need to be more concrete and relevant.

Strategies. In 2010 the members of the DWA, including Simavi, developed the FIETS sustainability approach to address the five key areas of effective, lasting change: financial, institutional, environmental, technological and social sustainability. (See section 1.4 for more information.) In keeping with the FIETS principles, the DWA followed a careful participatory methodology while developing the programme, to ensure harmonisation with other organisations working on WASH. This approach, which involves in-country programme partners and multi-stakeholder platforms, also ensured ownership of the programme’s interventions by their users and the institutions involved.

Simavi implemented integrated WASH programmes through our local partners, which formed a substantial part of the DWA’s activities and results in these countries. In Ethiopia and Mali, Simavi contributed through support to the local Water Aid offices. We also focused heavily on developing our in-country partner organisations’ capacity.

The Most Significant Change Stories study In 2015, we collected 11 Most Significant Change stories from nine partners in five countries to assess the impact of our five years of work to strengthen our partner organisations. We selected three themes for these stories: monitoring and evaluation practices, how specific knowledge enabled an organisation to change the way it works or thinks, and the changes effected by self-reflection.

Monitoring and evaluation. In Uganda, HEWASA reported how a different type of evaluation enabled a change in mindset: looking on the level of outcomes rather than number of activities. Also in Uganda, JESE told us how technological support enabled the organisation to work more closely with the community in its evaluation process, which fostered local ownership. And in Nepal, Newah described how a new monitoring tool enabled them to work more efficiently, which made their work easier.

Specific knowledge. We received five stories from four countries describing how specific knowledge helped a partner change the way it works or thinks. Each story showed how the introduction of a new approach (such as budget tracking in the case of DORP in Bangladesh, and outcome mapping in the case of New Energy in Ghana) or a new strategy (such as including private partnerships in the case of Smaart Paani and Uttaran in Nepal) enabled the organisation to increase its relevance and sustainability. Our partners largely described the support provided by Simavi as “strategic” and noted how thinking more strategically helped them achieve their goals.

Self-reflection. Samwel Jakinda at NIA in Kenya shared how the self-assessment tools Simavi provided helped his organisation identify specific issues that needed handling to make NIA more effective. Zunaed Ali at SLOPB in Bangladesh told us that increased selfreflection helped his organisation identify specific areas, such as gender, where the lack of a proper programmatic strategy hampered SLOPB’s effectiveness.

Many of our DWA partners have incorporated these new approaches, insights and strategies in strategic plans that describe the way forward for their organisations.

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Read more on: http://www.washalliance. nl/learn-more/downloads/

Action Research for Learning To improve the effectiveness of hygiene promotion and community empowerment activities within selected DWA projects, the alliance initiated a three-year Action Research for Learning programme. Led by the IRC and Simavi, the initiative increased the capacity of in-country alliance partners and other local stakeholders to critically reflect and monitor the effectiveness of their programmes. Partners learned to distinguish between achieving an activity and ensuring effectiveness (and sustainability), and adjusted their approaches as a result.

Ghana: “Through the initiative, we got the idea of leasing out the upkeep of more than 15 public toilets. We put out a call, and now a private organisation is managing these public toilets, which are being well used and maintained.” photo: Raymond Rutting

Action Research for Learning also increased our partners ’skill in designing monitoring frameworks and data collection tools, going beyond mere monitoring to assess the interventions’ effectiveness.

Bangladesh: Community-based monitoring was launched on a pilot basis in five villages in Tala subdistrict intervention areas. Seven months into implementation, stakeholders noticed a considerable improvement in behaviour, knowledge and practices related to hygiene, reinforcing their choice of intervention activities. The local partner is now using the monitoring method in all its projects.

Ethiopia: “The Action Research for Learning programme was very useful, as it not only provided room for our partners to understand what action research is, but also made it possible for our field staff to reduce complex community empowerment indicators to tangible research questions. This has deepened our partners’ and communities’ understanding of how to practically integrate community empowerment initiatives into their program design and implementation.”

Uganda: “The project enabled alliance partners and local government staff to learn about the effectiveness of different WASH implementation approaches. Local government officials participated in the reflection and learning meetings, where the results from different approaches such as community-led total sanitation, hand pump mechanic associations, and community-based monitoring using village health teams were shared.

This awareness on the effectiveness of these approaches was useful in getting buy-in from local governments for such things as establishing awards for water user committees to reward and motivate performance.”

Ethiopia: Local government staff developed their own tools to collect data on WASH behaviour in the community and used this information to adjust extension workers’ activities to increase their effect.

A major insight from the Action Research for Learning programme is that such research activities need to be fully integrated into the implementing partners’ projects and activities, rather than added later on. This includes setting aside sufficient budget and staff time to implement the research effectively and to stimulate the uptake of the related learning cycle within the local partner organisations. In addition, local government staff need to be included in the research activities so they are also able to reflect on the approaches and adapt accordingly.

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Theory of change. In 2013, the DWA began using a theory of change approach in all eight programme countries. In 2015, the final year of the DWA programme, Simavi incorporated the three pillars of our own Theory of Change (adopted in 2014) into our work in the programme.

Simavi pillar 1: Empowered communities In total Simavi and our partners ensured that more than 520,000 people received education on WASH in the last two years of the five-year programme, which falls short of the target value we had set of 730,000 people. In 2015 we reached fewer people with intensive WASH behavioural training than in 2014, because we focused more on ensuring sustainable WASH services and on activities to cement behavioural change in anticipation of the programme’s end.

We employed effective, repeated mass media coverage through newspaper articles to ensure that many people heard about WASH. In 2015, Simavi reached almost 16 million people through mass media campaigns, for a total of almost 30 million people over the programme’s lifetime (more than double our target). The local media in Kenya, Bangladesh and Ethiopia showed significant interest in covering WASH topics, which enabled us to achieve these large numbers.

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Read more on: http://simavi.org/longread/study-womenempowerment-washinterventions/

Empowering women through WASH It is often assumed that women’s participation in WASH committees will lead to their empowerment. To acquire greater insight into how this mechanism works, Simavi and the Gender and Water Alliance conducted a study to determine if, how and why women are empowered by participating in WASH interventions. In all the cases we studied, empowerment did take place, especially physical, political and sociocultural empowerment. Less progress was seen on the economic front. We also found that, for the women who were most empowered, participation in a WASH committee or intervention was a means to an end; it was ultimately the motivation, dedication and hard work of the women themselves that led to their empowerment. That is, WASH interventions do not themselves produce empowerment, but they can provide an environment that enables it.

photo: Raymond Rutting

Insights: • Assess the level of empowerment of the women in leadership positions at the beginning of the project or programme as well as at the end. By targeting women who are in a slightly advanced position to take the lead in platforms created by projects and programmes, they will be able to further empower themselves and increase community respect for women and their capacities in general.

• The four elements of empowerment (physical, economic, political and sociocultural) are interrelated. They influence each other and cannot be achieved in isolation. That means it is important to consider all four aspects in any WASH intervention. Not all elements need to be addressed in every programme all the time, but it is important to assess which element is the limiting factor and develop specific activities to strengthen that element. Tools can be developed to assess the limiting factor, and participatory monitoring and evaluation can be used to monitor progress. Staff should be trained to analyse activities from a gender and empowerment perspective and in the use of these assessment and evaluation tools.

• Develop an exit strategy with the local population. Together, decide how they will maintain the results achieved without external support.

• Encourage women who have been able to empower themselves to personally nurture one or more successors. The number of successors mentored could also serve as an indicator of project success.

• Empowerment processes take time, and it may not be possible to achieve sustained empowerment through a project lasting only a few years, especially if empowerment is not the main objective. Partners should look for ways to continue the empowerment process after the project ends, either by mobilising internal resources or linking to external programmes and opportunities.

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Simavi pillar 2: Enabling environment Ensuring lasting improvements. In 2015, our focus on creating sustainable structures to ensure continued WASH sector changes, WASH services user training and hygiene-related behavioural change resulted in an increased number of people trained in the use of social accountability tools (718 versus 350 in 2014) and an increase in the number of times a representative attended an advocacy meeting (1,307 versus 461 in 2014). We also continued our focus on training people to influence policy, adding another 803 in-country advocates to the more than 1,500 we trained in 2014. This will ensure the sustainability of the DWA’s activities beyond the end of the programme.

Increasing government budget. Through our budget tracking methodology we managed to persuade governments to increase their budgets for WASH. For example in Bangladesh we managed to secure an average increase of 14% in the Union Parishads (local government units). Our guiding principle in this approach is to propose an annual budget for WASH that is based on the real needs of real people. Involving the people who will be affected in budget preparation increases trust in local government institutions. Interestingly, we saw results not only in the Union Parishads where the programme was implemented, but also in neighbouring Union Parishads that noticed its benefits and adopted the technique.

Simavi pillar 3: Sustainable services Improved sanitation. The DWA programme has increased access to and the use of improved sanitation facilities for over 1.1 million people since 2011, nearly achieving the alliance’s target (1.2 million). This figure includes both the use of improved sanitation in homes and access to improved sanitation in public places.

Improved drinking water. The DWA programme has directly created access to improved drinking water sources – by constructing new sources or rehabilitating existing ones (including elements such as training in operation and maintenance) – for almost 590,000 people in communities, public places such as markets, schools and health facilities. While access is critical, the intended long-term effect is that people actually use improved water sources in their daily lives. To that end, roughly 500,000 people have reported they are now using improved drinking water sources in the DWA’s intervention areas. With this result, we have achieved the alliance’s target (441,000 people).

In 2015, Simavi provided an additional 83 public places with sustainable access to WASH services and established or rehabilitated 82 water points.

The future. During 2014 and 2015 the DWA’s members discussed the future of the alliance after its MS II financing ended. The DWA decided to continue its work together under the name WASH Alliance International. The alliance wrote a position paper titled Accelerating Sustainable WASH Services, which set out our strategy on how WASH Alliance International can accelerate its work and so contribute to meeting the SDG targets. In 2015, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to support WASH Alliance International with a one-year extension programme, which enables the alliance to capitalise on the investments made in the previous five years and concretely contribute to achieving the WASH development cooperation commitments pledged by Minister Ploumen.

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2.6 What went differently than expected

In our programme implementation, sometimes things don’t go quite as we’d anticipated.

Since Simavi is a learning organisation, part of our knowledge management strategy is to pay more attention to factors that contribute to unexpected or undesired developments and outcomes from our work. Below, we present two cases where things went differently than expected, one in the area of WASH and one in the area of SRHR. WASH In our Football for Water programme, Simavi works in Kenya and Ghana to create behavioural change on hygiene through football. We do this in a consortium led by the Royal Dutch Football Association. In one of the schools in Ghana, in a peri-urban area, latrine blocks constructed by local partners are being vandalised by residents of nearby communities, who do not have access to sanitation near their homes. The school tried to address this problem by building a higher wall around the latrine block, locking the building with heavy doors, and putting nails on the top of the wall. A few days after these adjustments, the nails on one part of the wall were removed, so that community members would still be able to place their hands on the wall and jump over it. To date, the toilets are still being misused by some area residents. This example demonstrates the importance of involving the surrounding communities in any WASH-in-schools programme, not only to increase access to sanitation in those communities, but also to ensure a better understanding of the need for WASH facilities in the schools as well as ownership of and pride in these facilities. All of this results in a willingness to maintain them, which contributes to their sustainability. In this particular case in Ghana, Simavi is in close contact and critical dialogue with the local partner organisation to see how we can better involve nearby communities to address the stated challenges.

SRHR In our ASK programme on youth-friendly services in Uganda, Simavi wrestles with a discrepancy in values between different segments of local staff. Sensitive issues such as the availability of contraception for youth and access to safe and legal abortion are being systematically addressed with our partners, with the aim that they will pass what they learn on to field staff and eventually the community. However, in this particular case, value clarification on comprehensive sex education and youth-friendly services is trickling down very slowly from our partner staff to its field staff and the community. During field visits, we came to realise that not all field workers at the partner organisation speak the same language of SRHR acceptance as we do, and in some cases field staff have little understanding of comprehensive SRHR information and youth friendliness. The problem is compounded by high turnover among partner staff and peer educators, as well as health workers being transferred to other facilities.

One important lesson learned in Uganda revolves around the transfer to non-project sites of health workers the programme has trained to provide youth-friendly services. When these health workers are relocated, our activities in the target facilities are less effective and our training costs increase. This has delayed both implementation and results at some project sites. Simavi is addressing this challenge through continuous value clarification efforts with partner staff, and we have encouraged our partner to address the issue of staff relocation with the district health office, which promised to involve our local partner in any decisions to relocate workers in the future.

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2.7 Monitoring and evaluation

Simavi’s Theory of Change (see section 1.4) is a logical road map that describes what we do and how our work on the three pillars leads to our ultimate goal: the sustainable improvement of basic health. But is there proof that the map will get us there in the most effective way? Having adjusted our monitoring framework to our Theory of Change in 2014, 2015 was an exciting year for Simavi as we ventured into the rich and challenging world of evidence-based programming.

We know what we do, we measure progress and adjust our strategies based on what we learn, but how solid is the evidence that all these efforts lead to the final aim of basic health? For example, is there scientific proof that when you teach people the importance of hand washing or using condoms, the incidence of disease goes down as a result of the programme? And if there is, can we also claim our intervention is the most cost-effective compared to others in the same setting?

With development cooperation funding increasingly under pressure, and given Simavi’s desire to increase its impact, we invited the Impact Centre Erasmus (ICE) research team to catalogue the scientific evidence for our SRHR and WASH interventions.

While this evidence-based analysis trajectory brought many insights, we also encountered some challenges. One of them was the mismatch between researched interventions and the interventions applied in our programmes. In some cases, the analysis focused on one specific intervention while in our programmes we work in an integrated approach that combines this intervention with others. Evidence for the isolated intervention does not transfer to evidence for the integrated approach. Another challenge was related to measuring an intervention’s cost-effectiveness, the comparison of investment to resulting health benefit. There is little systematic data available on SRHR or WASH interventions.

Nonetheless, the evidence-based analysis produced valuable insights that will help us enrich our programmes and therefore achieve more impact. Our findings will help us invest in effective interventions and avoid those for which the evidence demonstrates insufficient health or other long-term effects. Where interventions are supported by evidence, our monitoring efforts can be reduced to tracking performance, as there is no added value in demonstrating an effect already documented by scientific data. Where evidence for an intervention (or combination of interventions) is weak, we will, where possible, build that evidence throughout the course of our programme. We are also working with the ICE research team on ways to make a comprehensive intervention evidence database openly available to the sector.

Given the clear value of evidence-based programming, we intend to talk with our fellow organisations in the Netherlands and those who fund our work, to inspire them to shift monitoring and evaluation efforts from measuring what is known to measuring what we need to know for greater impact.

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2.8 Policy and programme development

In line with our 2015 annual plan, we continued to develop our key programme areas, the 16 major topics we address through our programmes. We finalised eight new key programme areas: social entrepreneurship, management of larger programmes, FIETS, IT in health, access to safe and legal abortion, male involvement, social accountability and partner capacity strengthening.

Based on stakeholder feedback we received (see chapter 4), we created several engaging fact sheets which we published on our website that shed light on our strategies and how we work.

Partner identification fund In 2015 we examined our current partner portfolio to assess the extent to which we are able to cover all the elements of our Theory of Change through the activities of our existing partners in the countries we work in.

Keeping the dissolution of the traditional north-south paradigm in mind (see section 1.1), we concluded that in some countries, we were not adequately equipped to cover our Theory of Change. Continuing without reinforcement would pose a risk to achieving our ultimate ambition to sustainably improve the basic health of 10 million people by 2020. We therefore decided to identify new in-country partners achieving results in the areas of our Theory of Change that we felt were not adequately addressed. We budgeted for a partner identification fund to identify new partners, train existing ones and initiate start-up projects with both.

In 2015 we conducted partner identification missions and we started up small programmes in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania and Nepal financed from our partner identification fund.

The remaining missions were covered from other sources. We identified an average of 10 potential partners per country; an average of three per country were shortlisted. We then selected an initial set of partners, whom we provided with a start-up grant for a small project to establish a track record with them in Uganda, Tanzania and Nepal. Going forward, we will continue to systematically invest in renewing our partner portfolio, ensuring that we cover our Theory of Change and increasing our capacity to implement and scale up programmes.

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3. Diversified financing and innovative partnerships photo: Jerry de Mars

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Strategy

3.1 Trends in fundraising

The global context in which Simavi works is dynamic and complex. International trends such as climate change, urbanisation and the growing cohort of young people affect the lives of our beneficiaries and the way we work.

Climate change demands that we develop projects in new ways that promote resilience.

WASH projects, for example, need to incorporate an environmental approach such as integrated water resources management. They should also use new technologies, such as latrines that require more advanced waste disposal techniques in flood-prone areas. Climate change demands new and innovative solutions, which Simavi is eager to apply and promote.

The growing cohort of young people makes SRHR projects even more relevant, as this demographic is a promising new market for SRHR services. In urban (and also rural) areas with enough demand, this gives small businesses an opportunity to develop products for the base of the pyramid. Simavi is using its experience to support small entrepreneurs.

The aid and trade agenda is also relevant for Simavi. Dutch companies are looking for ways to find new markets and be socially responsible at the same time. We are working with several larger Dutch companies to add value through our experience and expertise.

For example, we have developed a public-private partnership in Indonesia with Royal HaskoningDHV. We contribute our expertise in working with local partners on social issues, and the companies contribute the business approach.

To remain relevant, Simavi must stay abreast of these global trends and define – and sometimes redefine – its added value in this very complex process of creating change.

Changes in the donor landscape Many donors, especially bilateral donors, are facing serious challenges in their commitment to official development assistance: less money is available as aid budgets are increasingly used to cover refugee and asylum-seeker costs. The way this aid is being spent has also changed, as the focus shifts to public-private partnerships and channelled approaches such as climate finance (see also section 1.1). The competition for the available funds is fierce.

Private donors, businesses, institutions and philanthropic foundations are all looking for ways to improve this world as part of their missions. Their interests are increasingly focusing more and more on creating tangible value. Donors want to invest in the organisations that are able to create the most impact. Simavi is also working to maximise its impact in improving people’s basic health. We are working with the Impact Centre Erasmus to identify the interventions that are most successful, so that we can learn from them and adapt our programming to ensure that every euro spent is effective.

Other factors are also changing the way donors operate. They increasingly favour local organisations over global ones, focus on business approaches and innovative financing, and support consortia instead of individual organisations.

All these trends helped us to develop our strategy and objectives for 2015. To make transparent data and results available to our donors, we invested in our planning, monitoring and evaluation framework (see section 2.7), improved our database and launched two new websites (see section 4.2.1). One challenge here is that we work primarily with partners in extremely difficult – and not-so-digital – circumstances. In response to the trend towards supporting local organisations, we continued to expand our local presence (see sections 5.1 and 5.2) as part of our long-term decentralisation strategy.

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3.2 Fundraising objectives and results

Objectives We had three primary fundraising objectives for 2015: 1. Secure funding for new programmes to reach our ambition in 2020.

2. Diversify our donor base and explore new types of partnerships.

3. Increase our revenue from our Dutch constituency by intensifying our relationships with individual donors, the Dutch private sector and Dutch foundations.

To reach our ambition of improving the basic health of 10 million people by 2020, we needed to secure new funding in 2015 for several of our programmes (objective 1). Thanks to our clear fundraising approach and the dedicated work of our whole organisation we were able to secure the necessary funds for the new and bold programmes we developed (see section 3.5).

In 2015 we were mainly successful in achieving support from several departments of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dutch embassies. We invested in developing new relationships with other donors (bilateral agencies and foundations) and relevant partners during our World Tour, where we visited several international conferences to present our projects and show the impact of our work. We were able to meet potential donors and better understand their priorities and challenges and how Simavi could address these. This was a first step in diversifying our donor base and developing partnerships (objective 2; see sections 4.2.5 – 4.2.6).

In addition to continuing the strategies we adopted in 2014, we intensified our relationships with our individual donors in two ways (objective 3): 1. We used our 90-year anniversary to organise a special event for our most loyal volunteers, private donors, corporate sponsors and Dutch foundations (see section 4.2.5).

2. To this we added a new Major Donor strategy, targeting a new demographic we call “globalites”. These are highly educated critical thinkers in their forties and fifties who believe in sustainability. Our first Major Donor activity, the Day of Change, took place in October as one of our 90-year anniversary events. One hundred people participated in the event. We plan to continue wooing this demographic in 2016. (Read more about our 90th anniversary activities and the Day of Change event in section 4.2.5.)

To further increase revenues from our Dutch constituency, we piloted a fundraising event for schoolchildren (see the King’s Games in section 3.3.2). We believe this event can be successful and will repeat it in 2016, taking into account the feedback we received.

To better engage the Dutch private sector in our work, we developed a new strategy to support them in realising their corporate social responsibility objectives. Due to unfamiliarity with the Simavi brand among the private sector and an insufficient return on investment for participating companies, we did not achieve the success we had envisioned: the balance of revenue minus investment was negative for both Simavi and the companies. We have decided not to pursue this strategy in 2016 while we investigate how we need to adapt it to be successful.

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INCOME STATEMENT FOR THE YEAR 2015

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

37

30

442

1,789

2,141

1,957

Sponsoring

101

-

84

legacies and bequests

719

pm

104

2,646

2,171

2,587

1,595

1,145

1,943

139

100

276

14

30

66

1,748

1,275

2,285

Dutch Ministery of Foreign Affairs for Simavi

9,379

8,696

8,568

Dutch Ministery of Foreign Affairs for Alliance partners

5,681

5,540

7,011

898

1,223

420

15,958

15,459

15,999

Interest income

46

94

92

Other income

21

-

60

20,419

18,999

21,023

(x 1,000 Euro) Income from direct fundraising Collections Donations and gifts

Total Income from third-party campaigns The Dutch Postcode Lottery Co-financing projects Aqua for All Co-financing projects other Total Government grants

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation Total

TOTAL

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3.3 Income from direct fundraising

OVERVIEW OF DIRECT FUNDRAISING

Budget 2015

Actual 2015

Difference (actual - budget)

30

37

7

Individual giving

805

954

149

Walking for Water event

300

290

-10

International foundations

300

68

-232

Dutch foundations

425

340

-85

Private sector

311

238

-73

Legacies and bequests

pm

719

719

2,171

2,646

475

(x 1,000 euro) Sale of collection boxes

Total

3.3.1 Collection As the costs of our nationwide door-to-door collection drive were too high compared to its benefits, we decided in 2013 that 2014 would be our last year. In 2015 we sold our collection boxes, which generated €37K in income.

3.3.2 Donations and gifts Individual giving “It was amazing to see how the children helped and encouraged one another. And to see them realise that it’s actually pretty hard to carry so much water on your back – that it can be pretty tough for kids their age in other countries.

And to realise how much safe drinking water we actually use.”

Corina Verburg teaches fifth grade at De Zeester primary school, which participated in this year’s Walking for Water event.

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Our objective for 2015 was to raise €805K from 19,000 individual donors. We ultimately raised €954K from 19,258 individual donors. This excellent result is concrete evidence that the strategy we’ve been using since 2013 to attract new individual givers and engage existing ones is working. There were three main reasons why we raised far more than we had planned: 1. The average gift per private donor increased to €18, €5 more than in 2014. There are two reasons for this. The first is beyond our control: people’s faith in the economy grew in 2015. The second is the direct result of our efforts to upgrade our existing donors. By diversifying the content in our direct mailings (see sections 4.2.3 and 4.2.4) and personalising our approach (see section 4.2.9), we provided many donors with an impetus to support Simavi’s work with a higher or more regular donation.

2. Our fundraising efforts this year included a successful emergency paper mailing about Nepal right after the earthquake in April, which yielded high results.

3. The events we organised as part of Simavi’s 90th anniversary (see section 4.2.5) clearly led to higher donations at the end of the year and more pledged gifts.

We learned two valuable lessons in 2015. First of all, personal contact – not only during events, but also through phone calls and handwritten cards – makes donors feel appreciated and encourages greater involvement. Second, content truly is king. It’s crucial that our fundraising appeals convey a clear urgency, an authentic story and a clear mission that people can relate to.

Diversified financing and innovative partnerships

Campaigns and events Walking for Water campaign (Wandelen voor Water) Walking six kilometres with six litres of water on your back is part of daily life for many children in developing countries. During the annual Walking for Water campaign, roughly 35,000 students from 600 Dutch primary schools experienced how hard that is to do. The event is an initiative of the Aqua for All Foundation, which brings together 50 companies, associations, public authorities and charitable organisations (including Simavi) to raise money and awareness

“I told people how kids in Kenya have to walk about six kilometres a day to get safe drinking water.

And that kids still die from diseases like diarrhoea because their water isn’t safe. Then I explained what Walking for Water does.”

This year, we planned to raise €250K by involving 200 schools and 12,000 students. We ultimately received €290K from 164 schools and 13,600 students. Our revenue was higher than planned for two reasons: first, individual students raised more money on average than we had estimated; second, our successful strategy to engage more Rotary clubs, companies and municipalities as partners enabled us to set up a greater number of walking trails throughout the country, and thus engage a greater number of schools.

In November we took two Rotary members to Uganda with us for Simavi’s 90th anniversary.

The Rotarians came back ambassadors for life and will surely promote Walking for Water among their colleagues, thus further increasing our connection with Rotary clubs in the Netherlands and enabling us to involve even more schools in the coming years.

Eleven-year-old Shen-En didn’t stop looking for sponsors until she’d filled her form with pledges, front and back.

The King’s Games: Become a Water Hero (Word een Waterheld) The King’s Games is a fun annual event for Dutch primary school children held on the Friday preceding King’s Day, a national holiday in the Netherlands. Each school is free to organise the event as it wishes. Thanks to our intensive contact with schools for the Walking for Water event, we learned that many schools find organising activities for the King’s Games a challenge. That led us to develop an innovative event, Become a Water Hero, which combines sports activities with fundraising for WASH in schools in developing countries.

In 2015 we ran a pilot event. The pupils enjoyed the event, and the schools were very enthusiastic about the time that our activities – including simple instructions and ready-touse tools – saved them in organising their own King’s Games. In the end, only 500 children participated instead of the anticipated 6,000. Thanks to very clear feedback from the participating schools about the restricted timeline to sign up and the donation format, we believe this new event can be successful. We will use their feedback to fine-tune the event and roll it out to more schools in 2016.

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Foundations Simavi works with a number of corporate and private foundations at home and abroad.

Dutch foundations In 2015 we continued and consolidated our relationship with several current partners, such as ASN Foundation, Foundation Flexiplan, Insinger Foundation, Sionshulp Foundation, Johanna Donk-Grote Foundation and Weeshuis der Doopsgezinden Foundation. In total we received support from 36 Dutch foundations, totalling €340K. This was less than planned because an additional €75K pledged in 2015 will be received and spent in 2016, and thus will be included in the 2016 budget. If we add this amount to the €340K support from Dutch foundations, we achieved our targets, showing a slow but steady growth.

The more personal approach that we have been using since 2013 is paying off. For example, we personally asked Foundation Flexiplan to finance our Healthy Business, Healthy Lives project in Uganda for two years. This project will durably improve access to sexual and reproductive health information and projects in remote areas in Uganda using an innovative business model. The foundation confirmed its support in 2015, and the programme will run in 2016 and 2017.

International foundations We received a total of €68K from two sources to support SRHR projects. Through the Ushahidi Foundation, we received a grant from the international project Making All Voices Count; the second contribution came from an ongoing relationship with an international foundation that has asked to remain anonymous. The total amount was less than we had projected; relationship building takes time, especially with larger foundations.

Large foundations in particular have significant thematic expertise as well as clearly defined strategies. Here, too, our personalised approach is paying off. Our ongoing dialogue with Waterloo Foundation provides one such example. In its new WASH strategy, Waterloo seeks to support projects where WASH services are sustainably established, by working not only with citizen groups but also other local stakeholders such as enterprises and the district government. Simavi fully supports this vision, and we ensured that our 2015 project proposal reflected it.

In 2015, we invested in expanding our international network, with the goal to develop new relationships with international foundations. We have several contacts in different stages, which we will further cultivate in 2016.

Private sector We obtained €238K in contributions from our existing business partners. This was lower than our projected income of €311K because our B2B strategy (see section 3.2) did not take off as expected. We intensified our relationships with Dopper, CWS, Dunea and Made Blue as planned.

In response to the severe earthquake in Nepal, social enterprise Dopper began a crowdfunding campaign for a rehabilitation project in Ghorka, Nepal. If the required funding is raised, Simavi will begin rolling out this project in April 2016. We received €101K in 2015 from Dopper through sales of the company’s reusable water bottles, which was as planned12.

We worked with hygiene products and services provider CWS to develop a business model that provides a commercial benefit for CWS when it donates money to Simavi.

12 As required by the Dutch reporting guidelines for charities, this income appears in our annual accounts and thus the income statement in section 3.2 under “Sponsoring”.

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We also investigated ways to raise CWS employee engagement in projects that benefit Simavi.

Our revenues from water company Dunea increased in 2015 thanks to improved communication with Dunea’s clients. We also began discussing a more substantive collaboration, such as co-creating new WASH projects. This conversation is currently on hold, pending staff changes at Dunea; we expect to pick things back up in the spring of 2016.

Certified B-corporation Made Blue has made waves with its A Litre for a Litre campaign.

Unfortunately, the expected corporate participation has turned out to be much more difficult to realise than anticipated. At the beginning of 2016, Made Blue and all the parties involved (including Simavi) will evaluate ways to improve acquisition and work more closely together.

3.3.3 Legacies and bequests In 2015 we received â‚Ź719K in legacies and bequests. We developed a strategy to increase our revenue from legacies and bequests in the longer-term future and will be rolling it out in 2016, continuing to encourage donors to pledge legacies to Simavi.

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3.4 Income from third-party campaigns

“I started having periods when I was 14. I always dealt with it using the methods my mother taught me.

Menstruation often limited me in my work around the house and in our fields. At a Making Periods Normal meeting, I learned that it’s better to dry the cloths in the sun, or to use sanitary pads. I was also referred to the doctor. Now I buy sanitary pads for myself and my daughters, and I’m being treated for an infection.”

Sajni Devi, member of an MPN self-help group in Munger, India

3.4.1 Dutch Postcode Lottery The Dutch Postcode Lottery raises funds for charitable organisations committed to a greener and fairer world. It is the third largest private donor in the world, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. For each ticket sold, the lottery donates 50% of the revenue to charitable organisations. Simavi has been one of the Postcode Lottery’s beneficiaries since 1998.

The Postcode Lottery reviews its partnership with Simavi every five years. The last evaluation was in 2012. In renewing its contract with Simavi then, the lottery’s supervisory board stated that Simavi is a “trustworthy leader in the field of good causes, and very capable of developing and carrying out innovative projects in collaboration with local partners”.

In 2014 the lottery provided Simavi, Rutgers WPF and Women on Wings an extra donation of more than €2 million for our joint menstrual hygiene programme Making Periods Normal, and the programme really kicked off in 2015. Not only in India – where our efforts to raise awareness among girls, women and men in the Munger district of Bihar State have led to a greater understanding of menstrual hygiene, and 125 women now work to distribute sanitary napkins, reaching over 30,000 women and girls – but also in the Netherlands. For Menstrual Hygiene Day on 28 May, we ran the campaign One Extra Week targeting young women in the Netherlands. The results were amazing: thanks to an innovative media approach using hipster bloggers with a massive audience, especially among our target group, we were able reach almost 3 million people, well beyond our target of 1 million. The concept – what would you do if you had one extra week a month? – clearly spoke to young women; engagement (sharing, liking and posting on social media) was also much higher than anticipated: 40,000 to our target of 12,000.

Also in 2015, sustainable soap-maker Mama Sopa made a deal with the Dutch Postcode Lottery in which Mama Sopa products were part of gift boxes for lottery participants. This generated €8K in income for Simavi.

As in previous years, Simavi received a general grant of €900K from the Postcode Lottery in 2015. This support is of incredible value to us, as it can be used for any new initiative that is based on our mission and vision. We are grateful to the lottery’s employees for the lottery’s open and pro-active attitude: Simavi and the lottery are close partners who work together

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Diversified financing and innovative partnerships

intensively. We draw attention to our partnership through our website and in our campaigns, our newsletters and social media. photo: Jerry de Mars

The Dutch government continues to modernise its policy on gambling and games of chance.

We strongly hope the Dutch Postcode Lottery will be able to maintain its crucial position, which enables it to support good causes. Without the lottery and its participants, Simavi and other charities would lose an important source of support. Moreover, the general grant contributed by the lottery and its participants – the Dutch people – is unique in two ways: it is multiannual, and it enables us to make spending decisions based on our expertise and strategy.

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3.5 Income from government grants

Simavi’s top fundraising priority in 2015 was to secure financing for new SRHR and WASH programmes to reach our ambition to improve the basic health of 10 million people.

Almost all our SRHR projects were coming to an end in 2015. By the end of the year we had submitted 14 proposals to government funding agencies. Ten of those proposals were accepted, which represents a whopping 71% success rate. We highlight these grants below.

Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs We worked closely with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to develop new projects. Four of these grants were in response to public calls for proposals; the other three came directly through negotiated procedures with the donor Grants in response to public calls 1. At the end of January 2015, the Dutch government endorsed our programme WASH IT! (now called Watershed – Empowering Citizens), which we submitted in response to the Dialogue and Dissent call, which provides funding for strategic partnerships for lobbying and advocacy. The consortium13 will receive €16.4 million in the 2016–2020 period.

2/3. In March, the Ministry announced a new SRHR partnership fund of €215 million for the 2016–2020 period to continue its work in this priority area. Simavi submitted two proposals within two alliances, both of which were awarded. The Get Up, Speak Out Consortium14 will receive €40 million to improve SRHR education and services for young people in Africa and Asia. The More Than Brides Alliance15 will receive €29 million to tackle the problem of early and forced marriages.

4. In December, Simavi submitted the Going for Gold proposal to the ministry under the Funding Leadership Opportunities for Women fund, in partnership with Solidaridad and Healthy Entrepreneurs. Going for Gold will receive €8 million over the coming five years to improve women’s economic opportunities in artisanal and small-scale gold mining communities in Ghana and Tanzania. This diverse partnership enables us to take a holistic approach to solving the problems women face in these communities, including hazardous working conditions, limited access to health services, and sexual harassment.

Grants through negotiated procedures 1. Throughout 2015, Simavi and Rutgers WPF worked closely with the Dutch embassy in Bangladesh to develop a youth-focused SRHR programme. This programme will receive €6 million over the next four years to continue the work of the Unite for Body Rights Alliance in Bangladesh16, which began in 2011. The programme will be managed in Bangladesh, with Simavi and Rutgers serving as strategic partners.

2. Funding for the Dutch WASH Alliance17 was scheduled to run out at the end of 2015.

The alliance successfully submitted a request for extension to the ministry. The alliance will receive €6 million to continue its activities and develop a new proposal in 2016.

3. Our SHAW programme in Indonesia, funded by the Dutch embassy in Jakarta, ended in 2015. Simavi used the positive results to lobby the embassy for a follow-on programme.

The embassy approved our proposal for the SEHATI programme, which will receive €3 million to promote universal access to sanitation in seven Indonesian districts through 2019. The projects will build on the experience gained in SHAW and create an enabling environment to embed the Indonesian approach to community-led total sanitation at the government level.

13 The Watershed consortium is IRC (lead), Akvo, Wetlands and Simavi.

14 The GUSO consortium is Rutgers WPF (lead), CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality, dance4life, IPPF, STOP AIDS NOW! and Simavi.

15 The More Than Brides Alliance is Save the Children (lead), Oxfam Novib, Population Council and Simavi.

16 The Unite for Body Rights Alliance is Christian Hospital Chandraghona, Dushtha Shasthya Kendra, Family Planning Association of Bangladesh, Population Services and Training Center and RHSTEP. 17 The Dutch WASH Alliance is Amref Flying Doctors, Akvo, ICCO, RAIN Foundation, WASTE and Simavi (lead).

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“Simavi pitched us an extraordinary programme with a fantastic mix of humanity, responsibility and professionalism.

You certainly managed to appeal to both my head and my heart. I’m proud and pleased, as an individual and on behalf of TNO, to be working with you on programmes in this spirit that have a real impact. Here’s to a wonderful future for us all!”

Grants to public-private partnerships In addition to partnering with Dutch companies to increase our donation and sponsoring revenue (see section 3.3.2), we work to engage the private sector in developing and implementing programmes in Africa and Asia. We see real added value in such partnerships.

For-profit companies are able to provide sustainable products and services and develop technological and financial innovations to enhance access to and use of WASH and SRHR services.

1. Simavi has partnered with Dutch technology company Philips and Dutch engineering firm Witteveen+Bos to realise public primary healthcare facilities in Africa. The Community Life Centre package includes a building, medical equipment, lighting, IT, water and sanitation, and staff training on hygiene, operation and maintenance, as well as the promotion of commercial services (such as sales of water) to create revenue for the facility. A tender in Kenya was awarded to the consortium in 2015, but unfortunately it was later withdrawn due to lack of funding.

2. Simavi and Dutch engineering firm Royal HaskoningDHV have been working together since 2009. In mid-June we received good news from the Dutch embassy in Indonesia: the approval of a Royal HaskoningDHV project in which Simavi is a subgrantee. The project will assist three line ministries in Indonesia in accelerating the country’s urban sanitation development programme USDP-2.

Simavi will implement an innovative pilot programme in Lombok and support the sanitation working group (Pokja Sanitasi) and local government. The focus is on advocacy, raising awareness, building capacity and piloting new ways to market sanitation and hygiene.

Mathilde Miedema, programme manager at research organisation TNO.

3. In November we received the wonderful news that the menstrual hygiene programme we developed for the Dutch embassy in Bangladesh had been granted funding of €3.5 million for a four-year programme. The Ritu programme aims to increase awareness and address taboos and misbeliefs regarding menstrual hygiene. We will work with Dutch research organisation TNO and Bangladeshi private sector partners to develop an affordable, fully biodegradable sanitary napkin. Working with Bangladeshi communication agency RedOrange, we will set up an online platform that facilitates learning and communication and run several national campaigns using innovative strategies to engage and reach young people.

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4. A strong brand and transparent communication photo: Raymond Rutting

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Strategy

We build long-term relationships with our partners and nurture credibility among our stakeholders – both of which are vital to achieving our ambition – through clear, inspiring communication and a recognisable, trusted name.

In 2015, we continued to use the communication strategies we developed in 2014 for our Dutch and international target groups. We had four main objectives in 2015: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Clearly communicate our expenditures and project results to our stakeholders.

Increase awareness of Simavi and our brand promise: “basic health for all”.

Increase people’s appreciation of Simavi.

Increase people’s involvement with Simavi.

We implemented the following main activities to achieve our objectives: •

•

•

•

To further personalise our approach towards our stakeholders, we seized the opportunity of our 90th anniversary to organise events that let us engage face-to-face with our existing and potential constituencies.

We developed a new Always On online strategy, renewed our Dutch website and developed a professional English website to provide fresh, relevant content around the clock. We shared our stories, showed our expenditure and results, and engaged in conversations with our constituencies through social media.

We also used our 90th anniversary to develop a one-year World Tour strategy to support our fundraising objectives (see chapter 3) and to improve our profile for our corporate stakeholders (see section 4.2.6).

To specifically address awareness among the Dutch public, we developed two media campaigns and a brand campaign.

On the next page, we explain more about who our stakeholders are, how we communicate with them and what specific results our communication efforts achieved.

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4.1 Our stakeholders

To reach our ambition, we need to mobilise many people and engage them in our work.

The following table explains the specific stakeholder groups we define and through what channels we communicate with them.

Our stakeholders Type of stakeholder

Communication channels

Field stakeholders Children, young people and adults in our programme countries

Through our local partners and programmes (see section 4.2.11)

Local partners with whom we implement our programmes in the field

By email, telephone and face-to-face contact through our programme officers (see section 4.2.11)

Corporate stakeholders Institutional donors and philanthropic foundations

Website, newsletter, social media, reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings (eg at conferences)

CSOs and international networks and platforms that include CSOs

Website, newsletter, social media, reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings (eg at conferences)

Website, newsletter, social media (LinkedIn), Corporate partners with whom we develop reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetpublic-private partnerships ings (eg at conferences) Knowledge organisations

Website, newsletter, social media, reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings (eg at conferences)

Politicians and policy makers

Website, newsletter, social media (Twitter), reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings

The media

Website, newsletter, social media (Twitter), reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings

Dutch stakeholders Dutch individuals, and more specifically, “globalites�*

Website, newsletter, social media (Facebook), email, events, telephone

Our current Dutch individual givers

Mailings, newsletter, website, social media

Dutch schools, teachers and schoolchildren

Mailings, website (Walking for Water, Become a Water Hero), social media, telephone

Dutch corporate and family foundations

Mailings, newsletter, website, reports, social media (LinkedIn), telephone, events

Dutch companies

Mailings, newsletter, website, reports, social media (LinkedIn), telephone, events

Volunteers

Mailings, website, social media (Facebook), telephone, events

* Globalites are a newly defined audience we are specifically targeting in our communications in the Netherlands. These Dutch residents are highly educated critical thinkers in their forties and fifties who believe in sustainability and in achieving a fair and healthy world for everyone to live in.

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4.2 How we engaged with our stakeholders in 2015

2015 was a special year for Simavi. It marked our 90th anniversary, and we put extra resources and efforts into honouring this milestone. It was the perfect opportunity to review and renew the way we present ourselves, to strengthen our ties with our Dutch stakeholders, and to refine our profile to more fully engage our corporate stakeholders. Many of our activities to engage our stakeholders in 2015 revolved around our 90th anniversary.

4.2.1 Dutch and international websites Simavi launched two redesigned websites in April 2015, www.simavi.nl for our Dutch stakeholders and www.simavi.org for our international audience. Our objectives were to increase visibility (number of visitors) and engage more visitors (more shares and likes on social media, more newsletter subscriptions, more donations). Another important objective for the Dutch website was to better target our new, younger potential donor audience.

The new websites have a distinctive and responsive design, make use of creative and appealing story formats, and are accessible on any device. We took the distinct needs of our Dutch and international target groups as the starting point for our design, which led to different menu structures and different content for our Dutch and international sites.

Our Dutch site primarily serves Dutch individuals, companies and foundations, who want to intuitively experience our work and read personal stories. On this site, we explain our work in a clear and straightforward way, presenting four core themes: water, sanitation, hygiene, and safe and wanted pregnancies. Our international website serves our professional and institutional audiences, who are looking for detailed information on our expertise, approach and organisation. In 2015, both websites received very positive feedback and were mentioned to third parties by several partners as a good example.

We also invested in tracking our visitors’ online behaviour18. We will use this data to further improve both websites in 2016.

Unique visitors 2014 actual

2015 target

2015 actual

Actual growth

www.simavi.nl

66.4K

80K

77K

+ 15.9%

wwww.simavi.org

*

9K

9.8K

Not applicable

*In 2014 our international content was hosted on www.simavi.nl, so we don’t know the separate number of visitors.

Since simavi.org targets a specialist audience and does not advertise, the number of visitors is lower than for the Dutch website18. People spend an average of 3.5 minutes on simavi.org (our target was 3 minutes), which shows they are actually reading the content. The average visit to the Dutch website lasts 1.2 minutes (our target was 1 minute), which fits the “casual surfer” profile of the individual visitor.

As part of our new Always On strategy, we published an average of five news features on each website each month. The Dutch features put a human face on our WASH and SRHR projects, presented in an appealing story format. The international features contained up-todate WASH and SRHR content relevant for our professional partners and institutional donors.

The frequency, depth and variety of content underscored our status as a deeply engaged expert in the sector.

18 The Watershed consortium is IRC (lead), Akvo, Wetlands and Simavi.

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4.2.2 Social media We worked hard in 2015 to select relevant content and present it clearly and engagingly, and it appears that our efforts paid off. As a result of our new Always On strategy (see section 4.2.1) and our campaigns (see section 4.2.8), our social media constituency grew even more than we had expected. Stakeholder interaction (number of retweets, shares, and clicks) was high. Because film was not a priority in 2015, our number of YouTube views decreased slightly. social media 2014

2015 target

2015 actual

Actual growth

Twitter followers

1.7K

1.9K

2.1K

+ 24%

Twitter retweets, replies, likes and

1K

1.2K

1.6K

+ 65%

Facebook fans

1.4K

1.7K

2.1K

+ 56%

Facebook shares and comments

Not measured

n/a*

19K

n/a

LinkedIn followers

0.8K

0.9K

1.0K

+ 25%

YouTube views

7K

7K

5.8K

-8 %

*as part of our new Always On strategy, we developed this new metric during 2015

To further personalise our approach, we closely monitored our social media accounts, especially during campaigns, so that we could respond to both positive reactions and issues raised. We received many reactions (negative and positive), which we answered on average within a day. Topics we discussed with our stakeholders via social media in 2015 included donor privacy issues, our managing director’s salary, the effectiveness of development cooperation, and our work and approach.

4.2.3 Email newsletters In 2015 we developed a more attractive format for our email newsletters and sent them out as follows: • our international target groups (6 times / 450 subscriptions) • our corporate partners in the Netherlands (10 times / 800 subscriptions) • Dutch individual donors and other people interested in Simavi’s work (12 times / 10,000 subscriptions) The primary purpose of our newsletters is to increase recipients’ engagement with Simavi by sharing relevant content. In 2015, that content included updates on Simavi’s projects, reports on conferences we attended, information about our 90th anniversary events, and informal three-question interviews with relevant stakeholders. We sent a special newsletter to communicate our 2014 results and expenditures to all our stakeholder groups, using a specially designed dynamic infographic (see http://simavi.org/results2014/). Using the anonymous data our newsletter software gathers on what people read, we will further tailor the content of our newsletters to our stakeholders’ preferences.

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4.2.4 Mailings by regular post We sent nine paper mailings to our individual donors, asking for funds to finance our programmes. The results are described in section 3.3.2. Each mailing highlighted a different cause or country. One of these mailings included information about the impact and results of our work, both in 2014 and over the past 90 years.

4.2.5 Events We organised several events in the Netherlands around our 90-year anniversary. Our objective was to show who we are (visibility) and to actually connect face-to-face with our constituency (involvement). We organised three major events and used the traditional media (see section 4.2.7) and social media (see section 4.2.2) to publicise them and receive feedback.

photo: Carolien Sikkenk

Symposium In October we invited all our major and moderate private donors, business partners and volunteers to a symposium. Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix, Simavi’s patron, was also there. About 150 attendees enjoyed live music and presentations from several speakers, hosted by television personality Sylvana Simons. After the programme, visitors attended the opening of a photo exhibit on Simavi’s work in Ghana, Prevention Is Better: 90 Years of Simavi, by photojournalist Raymond Rutting. The event gave us the chance to get to know our donors and hear their opinions and needs.

Informal networking event Also in October, we invited our stakeholders in the Dutch WASH and SRHR sectors to an informal networking event. Social researcher Kellie Liket highlighted evidence-based impact measurement and transition management expert Jan Rotmans talked about system innovation. The event was attended by 70 people and helped to establish Simavi’s position as a thought leader in the Netherlands’ WASH and SRHR sectors.

Day of Change As part of our Major Donor fundraising strategy (see section 3.2), we organised a Day of Change in November with pro bono support from consultant Anatol Kuschpeta of New Life University. The objective was to present ourselves to a new target group – future major individual donors – and to explore whether our plan to set up a major donor network in 2016 A strong brand and transparent communication

65

had potential. One hundred people participated in the event. We invited internationally renowned photographer Jimmy Nelson to speak about his unique project Before They Pass Away, and Pamela Teddy, the director of our Ugandan partner HEWASA, talked about the impact she sees and challenges she faces in the field. The event was well received, and participants told us it was inspiring. We also asked participants to give us written feedback on their perceptions of Simavi and our work, and how they envisioned the ideal donor network. The feedback we received was abundant and very helpful in further developing our strategy and the network, which we launched in January 2016. photo: Carolien Sikkenk

4.2.6 Conferences To reach our objective to connect with new institutional, private sector and CSO stakeholder groups and show that Simavi is a valuable partner in developing new WASH and SRHR programmes, we developed our World Tour strategy. As part of our World Tour, we attended WASH and SRHR conferences worldwide: the International Conference on Population and Development in Montreal, World Water Week in Stockholm, the Water and Health Conference in North Carolina (USA), the Global Maternal Newborn Health Conference in Mexico City, and the EuroNGOs International Conference in Oslo. Before, during and after each conference, we published poster presentations, fact sheets, blogs, interviews and topical articles on our website and in social media. We came back with many new contacts, both potential donors and partners. This approach also contributed to the growth of our website visitors and email newsletter subscriptions, both of which showed a peak during conferences. We received frequent positive feedback about our online communications while talking with our international stakeholders. A point for improvement was to create printed fact sheets that we can share during conferences to display our expertise in a more appealing way (see section 2.8).

4.2.7 In the media Simavi’s 90th anniversary provided us with an excellent opportunity to generate free publicity in 2015. We developed a PR plan with two goals: 1) present the impact of our work in a positive way, highlighting people’s strength and empowerment rather than their problems and weaknesses, and 2) attract visitors to our photo exhibit (which ran from late October 2015 through January 2016).

Our efforts resulted in two interviews on Dutch national radio with our managing director 66

A strong brand and transparent communication

Ariette Brouwer about Simavi’s 90-year history and the impact of our work, an article about the photo exhibit and Simavi’s work in Ghana in the national TV guide KRO-NCRV Gids, and six articles in local newspapers.

On World Toilet Day in November, we conducted a successful Twitter campaign which led to an interview with our programmes director, Ewout van Galen, by Al Jazeera English.

4.2.8 Campaigns In 2015 we developed two media campaigns for the Netherlands. Both were successful, exceeding our targets for the number of people reached.

1. We ran a general brand campaign from April through December to increase awareness of Simavi among current and future individual givers. The campaign focused on communicating our brand promise (basic health for all) and its importance (water, sanitation, hygiene, and safe and wanted pregnancies are crucial to break the cycle of poverty).

Simavi brand campaign Target (number of people)

Reached (number of people)

Facebook advertising 450K

513K

Outdoor posters at railway stations

2 million

2 million

Print advertisements in national

n/a

170K

Google banner ads

5 million

5.9 million

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2. On World Toilet Day, 19 November, we launched the I Love My Toilet campaign with our business partner CWS. Our goal was to increase awareness of both Simavi and the worldwide lack of toilets.

Because this campaign targeted Simavi’s younger stakeholders, the tone of voice was bold and humorous.

I Love My Toilet campaign Target (number of people)

Reached (number of people)

Facebook advertising 200K

248K

Website visitors

250K

240K

Video

200K

228K

We plan to extend this campaign in 2016.

4.2.9 Personal communication We personally thanked our individual donors through phone calls and handwritten notes.

We also surveyed our individual donors twice in 2015. These online surveys generated two main conclusions: first, respondents were unanimous in wanting to hear more about Simavi in the media. We started working on this in 2015 during our 90th anniversary events and we will continue focusing on PR in 2016. Second, because most of our current individual donors are older, the online response rate was low. In 2016 we will develop a new way to measure individual donor satisfaction from 2017 onwards.

The individual givers who approached us primarily had questions about the programmes we have shared with them.

We personally engaged with our institutional donors by phone, email, social media and face-to-face conversations during conferences and networking events. The topics discussed included the progress and operation of our partnerships and alliances, our added value, our approach, government commitments, and evidence-based policy and practice.

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4.2.10 Reports We submitted in-depth reports to those of our institutional donors and foundations who require them.

4.2.11 Field dialogue Throughout our collaboration with local partners, we engage in intensive dialogue during programme appraisal, monitoring and evaluation. This dialogue leads to the abundant exchange of ideas and suggestions on how our cooperation can be improved and streamlined. Simavi believes this process is a crucial component of our work with local partners, as sound and effective programme design and implementation are based on mutual understanding. In our programme monitoring, we always build in an informal capacitystrengthening element, giving input and feedback on reporting, methods and approaches, and results.

In 2015 we did not receive any formal complaints from our partners. However, to get a better picture of how our partners view the relationship they have with Simavi, we have planned a partner satisfaction review in 2016.

4.3 Complaints

At Simavi, we believe that critical feedback from engaged stakeholders helps us achieve our ambition. We welcome input on what we can do better from donors, volunteers, partners, beneficiaries and anyone who is interested in the work that we do.

People can submit a formal complaint using the instructions on our Dutch and English websites19. We strive to resolve formal complaints within two weeks. In 2015 we did not receive any formal complaints.

We also track suggestions and informal complaints. We strive to respond to every suggestion and informal complaint within one week, using the same medium through which we were contacted: telephone, paper post or email.

In 2015, we received three informal complaints from private donors who continued to receive mail from us after they had unsubscribed. They told us they’d had to call about three times.

We called them back, thanked them for letting us know, apologised for the inconvenience, and updated their status in our database. We then sent them a confirmation letter. We also reviewed our internal procedures to see where we’d dropped the ball – no one should have to call three times.

The bulk of the informal complaints we received – 15 of them – came at the end of the year, after we sent an email reminder to everyone who hadn’t responded to our fundraising mailing in November. They told us they didn’t appreciate that kind of communication. We thanked them for letting us know, apologised, and changed their database status so they will not receive these reminders in the future. However, this once-a-year reminder is an important part of our direct marketing strategy. For now, we plan to send it again in 2016. If we again receive several complaints, we will review our approach.

We don’t count emails to inform us of private donors who have passed away, emails requesting we remove someone from our communications list, or personal opinions expressed on social media as informal complaints. See section 4.2.2 for more on how we use social media to engage our stakeholders.

19 You can see these instructions at simavi.org/complaint-policy.

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5. A professional organisation photo: Raymond Rutting

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Strategy

Simavi is a professional development organisation with around 50 employees from a wide range of disciplines, all working to durably improve basic health conditions for marginalised communities in Africa and Asia. In addition to our headquarters in Haarlem, the Netherlands, we have two field offices: in Dodoma, Tanzania and in Jakarta, Indonesia.

5.1 Organisational development

In 2015, we continued to reap the benefits of our ongoing work to professionalise our organisation.

Simavi’s 2014–2020 organisational structure, developed in 2013 and finalised in 2014, proved effective in its second year of use. We were able to obtain new and continued programme funding in line with our long-term objectives. 93% of our employees feel that Simavi now has a clear strategy (up from 40% in 2013 and 92% in 2014), and support for it remains high (93% in 2015, up from 61% in 2013 and down slightly from 99% in 2014)20.

Human resource management remained a priority in 2015. We updated our recruitment procedure and began the conversion to digital personnel records. We developed a general HR framework for our local presence, to provide context-specific HR guidance and assist in creating clear descriptions for our in-country positions. We expanded and professionalised our local presence in Tanzania and Indonesia by hiring dedicated and skilled staff. In total we hired 18 new employees, including an HR officer who began on 1 July 2015.

Employee satisfaction and engagement also remained a priority in 2015. The revised policies we adopted in 2014 have borne fruit: 94% of our employees enjoy coming to work, and the percentage who are proud to work for Simavi grew from 75% in 2013, to 92% in 2014, to 96% this year. Nonetheless, challenges remain: opportunities for career development (44% not satisfied, a slight increase compared to 2014), internal communication (46% not satisfied, a slight improvement compared to 2014) and work pressure (26% experience stress at work and 65% say they do not have enough time to satisfactorily complete activities). Each of our departments has discussed the survey’s results and identified the next steps to take; Simavi-wide, we address workload management and adequate information sharing in every departmental meeting. These issues will be further addressed in 2016.

Employee representation Simavi’s employee representative body (ERB) consists of three elected employees who discuss issues that are important to Simavi and its employees. They also advise the management team on employees’ behalf. The ERB’s tasks are set out in its rules and regulations.

In January 2015, the two new ERB members elected at the end of 2014 began their terms.

The ERB met four times in 2015. Among other things, the ERB discussed financial scenarios and their potential consequences for Simavi, travel policy and security policy, internal communications, and the number of employees at Simavi and how that affects employee representation.

20 Results from the detailed annual employee satisfaction survey we conducted in the second quarter of 2015.

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5.2

Simavi’s organisational structure did not change in 2015.

Organigram

The Indonesia field office will support the start of the SEHATI programme in 2016. The field office in Tanzania will continue to support the MKAJI programme. During 2015 both field offices started several local recruitment processes, which added two in-country staff members in the last quarter of 2015 and beginning of 2016.

In Bangladesh, we recruited a local programme manager for the Ritu programme. She started in January 2016.

In 2016 Simavi plans to further expand its local representation in these countries, as well as in Uganda and Kenya.

Managing Director Finance & Operations

Personal Assistent

WASH Alliance

Partnership Development

Programmes

Communication & Fundraising

PME

Public Affairs

WASH

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SRHR

Institutional Fundraising

Local Representation

Business Development

Fundraising

Marketing & Communication

5.3 Executive board and management team

Simavi is managed by a one-person executive board (the managing director). The managing director is ultimately responsible for Simavi’s operation, the decisions made and the results achieved. The managing director delegates day-to-day implementation to Simavi’s department heads.

Together, the managing director and the department heads make up Simavi’s management team (MT). The MT develops Simavi’s policy. The managing director signs off on that policy and supervises its implementation.

The managing director is evaluated by the supervisory board (see Part II), and the members of the management team are evaluated by the managing director.

The management team consists of the following members: • Ariette Brouwer is Simavi’s managing director.

• Pauline Eenhoorn leads the communication and fundraising department.

• Ewout van Galen leads the programmes department.

• Albert Klomp leads the finance and operations department (since September 2015).

• Nanneke Nix leads the partnership development department (since March 2015).

Activities in 2015 In 2015, the MT met 14 times. Fixed items on the agenda are the progress of our annual plan, human resources, the progress of our larger programmes, updates on alliances, and institutional fundraising. Other topics in 2015 included risk management, our employee satisfaction survey, our annual report and accounts, our strategic partnerships with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other institutional donors, the revision of our terms of employment, our fundraising strategy, Simavi branding, local presence, the process of defining the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, our partner approval process (including partnerships with private sector companies), ISO certification, Simavi’s 90th birthday, and our WASH and SRHR policies.

The MT also continued to receive pro bono leadership development training and change management coaching from Aberkyn.

MT compensation In accordance with the standards set by Goede Doelen Nederland (the Dutch industry association for charitable organisations, formerly called VFI), Simavi does not pay bonuses to its management team or any other employee.

Our managing director’s compensation Our supervisory board has set the managing director’s compensation package using Goede Doelen Nederland’s guidelines for management salaries at charitable organisations (Adviesregeling Beloning Directeuren van Goede Doelen). Ariette Brouwer received €97,951 in 2015. This includes Ariette’s gross salary and holiday allowance 21. Please see the notes on staff costs in section 17 of the annual accounts for more details. Ariette held no ancillary positions.

21 By law, employees in the Netherlands receive a holiday allowance equal to 8% of their gross salary, paid in May or June.

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5.4 Employees

Human resources overview (year end) 2015

2014

2013

2012

59

50

46

45

Expat in-country employees

1

1

1

1

Native in-country employees

3

0

0

0

Native in-country consultants (longterm)

2

0

0

0

Native in-country staff employed through partner organisations

0

4

4

4

Head office employees (in FTE)

53.1

45.9

40.9

39

Part-time head office employees (fewer than 36 hours per week)

55%

54%

72%

76%

32

33

32

31.1

Permanent/temporary contracts

25/34

23/27

25/21

23/22

Men/women

10/49

11/39

8/38

11/34

2/3

2/3

3/2

3/2

Average age

41

40

41

42

University degree

41

33

24

24

9

10

12

13

Office volunteers

18

21

12

12

Interns

11

4

6

2

3.2%

3.7%

4%

4.9%

Employees leaving the organisation

14*

16

7

6

New employees

18*

20

8

8

Employees in Simavi’s head office

Average number of hours

Men/women in management team

University of applied sciences degree

Sick leave

*Includes 4 employees on short-term contracts (≤3 months) who joined and left Simavi during 2015.

The total number of employees was higher in 2015 than in 2014. The difference is largely

due to assignments for which we hired temporary employees instead of using external consultants and two maternity leave replacements. Our programmes department gained the most FTEs; this growth reflects our temporary need to cover the workload generated by closing several large programmes and starting up new ones, while continuing to manage our existing programmes.

Consistent with our annual plan for 2016, we will decrease the total number of employees from 59 to around 50 between 1 January and 1 July. By then, most of the temporary assignments will be completed, and we can reduce our staffing to its 2014 level. We continue to monitor the balance between permanent and temporary contracts to ensure a flexible organisation that can adapt to changing circumstances.

We are pleased that we have been able to increase the number of interns at Simavi’s head office. In 2015, our programmes department made eight internship assignments available, and the experience has been positive.

The percentage of sick leave further decreased in 2015, as a result of careful case management by our line managers and HR.

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5.5 Internal organisation

Quality management system The quality of Simavi’s operations is safeguarded by an ISO-certified quality management system. This system monitors and evaluates our internal processes. It is anchored in six internal manuals, which specify the applicable processes, procedures and policies. More detailed information is available in our declaration of accountability at www.simavi.org/ declaration-of-accountability. This document also describes Simavi’s policy cycle.

In 2015, we performed two internal audits on our processes and procedures to ensure quality. The outcomes of these internal audits were discussed in the management review and followed up accordingly.

In September, Certiked conducted its annual external audit of our ISO 9001 certification.

We successfully completed this surveillance audit, and the present certificate is valid until 15 September 2018.

Education and training We consider each employee’s educational needs and desires during his or her regular planning, evaluation and performance cycle. The combined results from all employees are used to create an organisational training plan.

Code of conduct New employees are familiarised with Simavi’s staff code of conduct when they start work.

We base our code on the one published by Goede Doelen Nederland. In addition, we have included sections from the International Federation of Red Cross Societies’ international code of conduct for humanitarian assistance. No violations of the code were reported in 2015.

Volunteer policy People who work at least four days per month on Simavi’s behalf are offered a volunteer contract. This contract sets out their rights and obligations. We make verbal agreements with all our other volunteers.

All our departments make grateful use of volunteers and interns who support our employees.

We value them highly; they help us to achieve our ambitions, and are an integral part of the Simavi team. Like all Simavi staff, they are involved in celebrations and receive a small gift on their birthdays.

Corporate social responsibility In selecting and monitoring our local partners, we make sure they share our views on what makes a world that works for everyone, including gender equality, LGBT rights, diversity and inclusion, HIV and AIDS, cooperation among civil society organisations, financial management and sustainability. Based on this policy we have terminated our relationship with one partner in Indonesia.

In accordance with our Theory of Change (described in section 1.4), sustainability is a core component of our programmes in developing countries. At our home office in the Netherlands, we are equally aware of our responsibilities with regard to the environment.

We offset the CO2 emissions from our road and air travel through a compensation contract with Climate Neutral Group. Our lunches largely consist of organic and fair trade products.

We use biodegradable cleaning products, we separate out recyclables, we purchase green electricity, and we use FSC-certified paper for printing and copying as well as for our correspondence and newsletters.

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5.6 Risk management

As an organisation that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship and that depends on subsidies, gifts and partnerships, Simavi encounters risk. We are committed to managing that risk as an integral part of our operations, focusing on strategies that shield Simavi’s mission and objectives from harm. We therefore integrate risk analysis and risk management into our strategy across all three levels: organisation, programme and country.

In 2015 we reviewed our risk management policy. We are currently updating our risk management framework and guidelines based on that review. The new versions will help us to systematically scrutinise risks in order to optimise our decision-making and safeguard our operations. The primary risks we face are a permanent topic on the agendas of both management team and supervisory board meetings.

Simavi distinguishes four generic risk types: programmatic, organisational, financial and reputational.

Programmatic risks Simavi’s programmes are its core activity. They entail several aspects of risk that might jeopardise their implementation or outcomes, such as interventions that are poorly executed, fraudulent local partners, substandard partner performance, and security, safety or health incidents. Simavi’s programmatic risk tolerance is moderate: in doing our work, we cannot avoid taking risk. This is acceptable, provided we are aware of these risks and are able to manage them without jeopardising our continuity and ambition. We have put several preventive controls in place to reduce the likelihood of a risk occurring and to mitigate the consequences if it does. Clear internal policies on fraud, compliance and sanctions, the systematic scrutinisation of existing and new partners, and a safety and security policy are examples of these controls.

In 2015, Simavi’s vulnerability to programmatic risks was demonstrated by a situation we encountered in our MKAJI programme in Tanzania. An external audit revealed that our local partners’ internal controls and financial reporting were not up to par. Based on those findings, we have sharpened the applicable procedures and appointed a senior financial officer and a procurement officer in Tanzania. A follow-up audit showed significant improvement on most of the issues; the remaining points will be addressed in 2016.

Organisational risks Simavi is highly dependent on its employees and systems to achieve its goals and objectives.

Inherent 0rganisational risks include data security and the availability of qualified staff and well-functioning information systems. Simavi’s organisational risk tolerance is low. We are committed to responsible HR management and have enacted policies to safeguard our employees’ health and safety. Our ISO-certified quality management system is an important means of ensuring the controlled and reliable execution of Simavi’s operations and mitigating the associated risks.

Financial risks Fluctuations in income are Simavi’s main financial risk. Our financial risk tolerance is low: drastic changes could significantly affect both individual project continuity and the organisation as a whole. In 2015, several major programmes came to an end. This would have been a serious threat to Simavi’s continuity if we had not obtained funding for new programmes. Fortunately, with great dedication we were able to obtain broad funding for our goals for the coming years (see sections 3.5 and 7.5).

Simavi continues to diversify its fundraising strategies in order to spread its income sources and thus its financial risk. Since 2014, we have invested significantly more effort into our 76

A professional organisation

relationships with the private sector, institutional partners and international governments.

At the same time, we have taken great care to retain and expand our individual donor base, and we have developed new fundraising methods for new markets such as international and online donors. This ensures that non-earmarked funds (which can be spent on any project) remain available. The flexibility this confers is vital, since many donors require that Simavi match the funds they donate, to double the amount available for the associated project.

Simavi’s international operations expose it to some currency risk. To mitigate this risk, Simavi strives to contract and commit only in euros. Some contracts, however, are denominated in US dollars. We hedge the resulting risk by maintaining US dollar liquidity that equals our US dollar obligations under these contracts.

Simavi mitigates the financial risks arising from fire, burglary, accidents, long-term illness and liabilities through insurance.

Reputational risks For a CSO like Simavi, a good reputation is essential – but it’s also fragile. Any incident arising from the aforementioned risks may pose a concrete threat to Simavi’s reputation and thus affect its ability to achieve its goals and objectives, and even its continuity.

But other factors can also damage Simavi’s reputation: bad, incomplete, incorrect or uncontrolled communication (online and offline); lack of transparency; embroilment in controversial issues or debates; bad press; ethics and integrity issues; incidents in the fundraising or civil society sector; and environmental incidents. Our reputational risk tolerance is low: these risks may affect people’s trust in Simavi and eventually reduce the donations and funding we need to obtain our goals.

To mitigate reputational risk, Simavi endeavours to establish a clear brand identity and to communicate openly and with a positive tone. We seek not to be provocative, but to focus on establishing cooperation and thought leadership. On a daily basis, we monitor social media discussions that may affect Simavi, in order to detect negative conversations early so we can act on them effectively.

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6. Financial review n photo: Raymond Rutting

78

Strategy

This chapter details the financial position, income and expenditure of Simavi in the financial year 2014.

6.1 Accountability

Simavi’s financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the Dutch Accounting Standard for Fundraising Institutions (RJ 650). Compliance with this guideline is a requirement of the Central Bureau on Fundraising (CBF). Accordingly, all expenditure is committed to Simavi’s goal of lasting improvement to basic health, and to the generation of income.

Simavi’s annual accounts have been audited by KPMG Accountants N.V. KPMG expressed an unqualified audit opinion on Simavi’s annual accounts for the financial year 2015, which form an integral part of Simavi’s 2015 annual report. KPMG performs no non-auditing tasks for Simavi. Audit reports are discussed by the supervisory board’s audit committee in a meeting attended by the auditor, Simavi’s managing director and Simavi’s director of finance and operations. The supervisory board has approved Simavi’s financial statements for 2015.

Financial position, reserves and funds Simavi’s financial position is sufficient to ensure continuity. Though sufficient funding is contracted for all our budgeted programmes, these donor commitments are not irrevocable.

For this reason, Simavi maintains a continuity reserve. Based on our risk profile assessment (see section 5.6), we estimate the need to cover six to nine months of operational expenditure. This will enable us to either regain sufficient funding or properly shut down or restructure our active programmes. Our continuity reserve meets this criterion, amounting to €2,212K on 31 December 2015.

For projects that are still conditional on future third-party financing, Simavi maintains a separate reserve that covers that part of the total financing required out of Simavi´s own funds.

Our reserve policy is described in the explanatory notes to our annual accounts in Part III. Simavi’s financial position is sound. At year end our solvability ratio (reserves and funds / total liabilities) was 51% (2014: 35%), and our liquidity (current ratio: short-term assets / short-term liabilities) was 2.0 (2014: 1.6).

Investments and liquidity Simavi maintains a very strict treasury policy. Excess funds may only be placed in interestbearing savings and deposit accounts with Dutch banks. The funds are spread over several banks to further minimise our exposure to investment risk.

On 31 December 2015 our total cash balance was €5,704K. This balance includes our continuity reserve, our earmarked funds and reserves, and the amounts we have received in advance to be spent on projects in the coming years.

Appropriation of result Simavi’s result for the 2015 financial year was €59K negative (2014: €366K negative). Our budgeted result was a negative amount of €518K. This anticipated negative result was financed out of earmarked reserves formed in previous years. These earmarked reserves are an instrument to mitigate timing differences between income and expenditure recognition.

Because we outperformed our budgeted result, Simavi was able to reserve an amount of €451K for the financing of new projects, €120K for legacy fundraising, and a further €50K for strategic development. For more information please refer to the explanatory notes to the annual accounts in Part III.

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6.2 Income and expenditure

Income In 2015 Simavi generated €20.4 million in income. Income from direct fundraising accounted for €2.6 million, approximately €0.5 million more than budgeted. Revenue from third-party campaigns accounted for €1.7 million, also €0.5 million above budget. Government grants accounted for €16.0 million, once again €0.5 million more than budgeted.

The government grants include grants from Dutch embassies and tenders awarded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other governments (including the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation). Of the total amount of €16.0 million, €5.7 million was received by Simavi as the lead agent for the Dutch WASH Alliance; this amount was directly paid out to the alliance partners.

The interest we earned on grant funding received in advance, €29K, has been added to the designated funds and will be applied towards the underlying objectives.

For further details on Simavi’s income, please refer to chapter 3.

Expenditure (x 1,000 Euro)

2015

2014

18,884

19,611

Total costs of generating funds

801

849

Total management & administration costs

793

929

20,478

21,389

Total spent on objectives

TOTAL EXPENDITURE

Expenditure on objectives Our actual expenditure on Simavi’s objectives in 2015 was €18.9 million (2014: €19.6 million), lower than in 2014 but €1.1 million higher than budgeted. The latter is mainly the result of greater expenditure on project activities than planned, compensating for the delays from 2014 in our WASH programmes in Tanzania and Ghana.

Expenditure on objectives (x 1,000 Euro)

2015

2014

Total income

20,419

21,023

Total expenditure

20,478

21,389

Total spent on objectives

18,884

19,611

% expenditure on objectives / total income

92,5%

93,3%

In 2015, the ratio of Simavi’s total expenditure on its objectives to its total income was 92.5% (2014: 93.3%). The decrease reflects the timing difference between receiving the funds from our own fundraising and the actual expenditure thereof. We strive to spend at least 92% of our income on our objectives.

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6.3 Financial key performance indicators

Simavi uses two key performance indicators to report its expenditure: 1. The costs of direct fundraising, expressed as a percentage of income gained from direct fundraising (CBF standard); 2. Management and administration costs, expressed as a percentage of total expenditure.

(x 1,000 Euro)

2015

2014

20,478

21,389

2,646

2,587

Costs of direct fundraising

497

504

Total management and administration costs

793

929

18.8%

19.5%

3.9%

4.3%

Total expenditure Total income from direct fundraising

% costs direct fundraising / income direct fundraising (CBF%) % total management & administration costs / total expenditure

Our direct fundraising costs were 18.8% of our total income from fundraising (2014: 19.5%).

This is well below the 25% standard set by CBF. Our management and administration costs were 3.9% of our total expenditure (2014: 4.3%). This reflects the lower cost level realised in 2015.

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7. Our outlook for 2016n photo: Geert Snoeijer

82

Strategy

We are entering 2016 with expectation, confidence and energy. Expectation, because the new Sustainable Development Goals provide momentum to scale up our efforts. Confidence, because we believe in our approach and we have many meaningful new programmes and partnerships that are about to start. And energy, because there is still a great deal to be done and we are eager to tackle it.

In 2013 we formulated our new mission, vision and ambition. We then defined our strategies, which led to as many as nine new programmes plus a one year extension for the WASH Alliance International, starting in 2016. In addition, given Simavi’s desire to increase the impact of our work, we asked the Impact Centre Erasmus research team to catalogue the scientific evidence for our WASH and SRHR interventions. This analysis produced valuable insights showing the need to further sharpen our mission, vision and ambition for the coming decade. We expect to finalise our review of Simavi’s strategy by the summer of 2016.

In 2015 the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs committed €215 million and €93 million to improve SRHR and women’s empowerment, respectively, over the next five years. In April 2015, the Dutch minister for foreign trade and development cooperation, Lilianne Ploumen, made a firm commitment to provide 50 million people with proper sanitation and 30 million people with safe drinking water by 2030. In the coming year we will use this support, against the background of the SDGs, to redouble our efforts to achieve access to improved water, sanitation, and sexual and reproductive health and rights for all by 2030.

More specifically, and taking the trends in section 1.1 into account, we have defined the following objectives for each of the four cornerstones of Simavi’s strategy: 1. The sustainable improvement of basic health; 2. Diversified financing and innovative partnerships; 3. A strong brand and transparent communication; 4. A professional organisation whose culture nourishes entrepreneurship and innovation.

7.1 The sustainable improvement of basic health

To achieve lasting impact, Simavi employs an integrated threefold approach: our Theory of Change (section 1.4). We have incorporated this approach into all our programmes, and we have developed key indicators for each step. In 2016 we will focus on the following areas: First, in the first half of 2016, we will finalise several large programmes and complete the final reports for the Unite for Body Rights, Access to Services and Knowledge, and Dutch WASH Alliance programmes. We will also complete our outcome measurement analysis for all three programmes. At the same time, we will start implementing a plethora of innovative new WASH and SRHR programmes: Going for Gold, More Than Brides, Get Up Speak Out, Ritu, Watershed – Empowering Citizens, WASH & Learn, Unite for Body Rights Bangladesh, Trachoma SAFE Communities, SEHATI and a one-year extension of the Dutch WASH Alliance (see section 3.5).

Second, we will further pursue our decentralisation strategy by strengthening our current local presence in Tanzania and Indonesia and establishing local representation in Bangladesh and Uganda. This decentralisation process heightens our understanding of the local context even more, assists us in effective lobbying and advocacy efforts, and helps us to capitalise on our in-country fundraising and PME efforts.

Third, we are working hard to finalise and implement our new PME strategy (including adjusting our IT system to accommodate the resulting changes). Part of this strategy is to begin using evidence-based programming based on the outcomes of our evidence-based project with the Impact Centre Erasmus. We will align our Theory of Change and our PME tools and instruments with these outcomes and recommendations. In this light, we will also conduct a meta-evaluation of Simavi’s programmes and results, to get a clear picture of our organisation-wide achievements and lessons learned.

Our outlook for 2016

83

Fourth, we will continue to engage in dialogue with potential donors to develop new programmes in the countries we work in, on our themes and areas of expertise. In that context, we will broaden and deepen our partner capacity by continuously identifying new partners who understand our approach and have the capacities and networks to help us roll out our Theory of Change. We will continue to initiate small start-up projects with those new partners, to establish a track record with them. In this context, we will also conduct a partner satisfaction survey to measure our partners’ level of satisfaction with Simavi, which will serve as a basis to evaluate and improve our partnerships.

Last, as a member of Dutch and international consortia, Simavi will also participate in international and national platforms that use strategic lobbying and advocacy to ensure that sufficient resources are available for WASH and SRHR programming that targets the poor and vulnerable. Our advocacy efforts will target among other things financing for WASH and SRHR, access to WASH services in schools and health facilities, menstrual hygiene management, youth SRHR, and safe and legal abortion.

7.2 Diversified financing and innovative partnerships

On our way to reaching our ambition, we have secured funding for several programmes for the coming years. While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will remain an important donor, we are working to broaden our funding pool by strengthening our relationships with foreign development agencies, multilateral institutions and international foundations. In 2016 Simavi will continue to develop new partnerships with international CSOs and the private sector.

Together, we will develop joint propositions that are appealing to international donors. We will also investigate alternative ways to generate income, for example by providing training in our expertise areas (known as “technical assistance”) to our local partners in our programme countries.

Our top priorities for partnership development for the coming year are: • Diversify our donor base: find new bilateral donors and international foundations who want to support our mission.

• Develop innovative partnerships with national and international organisations to create more strategic, appealing and relevant projects.

• Innovative financing: find suitable companies with which to develop public-private partnerships and develop new business models for Simavi.

Regarding Simavi’s fundraising among private donors, corporate sponsors and foundations in the Netherlands, we will continue to use our existing strategies as described in section 3.3.2.

Intensifying our personal approach with individual givers, corporate partners and foundations will remain an important part of our strategy. New activities include the following: • • • •

84

Our outlook for 2016

Setting up a network of major donors.

Starting a legacy recruitment programme.

Rolling out the King’s Games event for schoolchildren.

Reinvestigating our corporate partnership strategy.

7.3 A strong brand and transparent communication

As there are many fishermen trolling the same funding sea, it’s essential to have strong visibility, name recognition, and stakeholder appreciation and engagement. Our Always On communication strategy is yielding results: Simavi is increasingly being recognised as a valuable partner for integrated WASH and SRHR programmes. In 2016 we will continue our online Always On strategy by staying on top of the news, communicating transparently about our activities and results, and actively listening to our stakeholders. This enables us to add relevant contributions in online conversations and platforms.

Following a review of our organisational strategy at the start of the year, we will further sharpen Simavi’s positioning and develop a corporate communication strategy for 2017–2020 targeting our international stakeholders. We will start building thought leadership on specific topics. Attending international conferences to showcase our expertise will remain important to increase Simavi’s international profile. In early 2016 we will revise our new websites to improve their effectiveness and usability, based on our findings in 2015.

We will improve online communications for our Dutch stakeholders by developing a targeted content strategy and producing rich and high-quality content. We will also continue raising brand awareness and engaging our stakeholders through campaigns on World Water Day and World Toilet Day and through PR activities. We will explore the possibility of engaging well-known Dutch personalities as goodwill ambassadors to increase our free publicity. And we will continue our event strategy, thus engaging more often and more deeply with our existing and potential constituencies.

7.4 A professional organisation

A well-functioning organisation, efficient and effective, is key for Simavi to achieve its goals.

The organisational changes we initiated in 2013 are complete and appear constructive. In 2016 we will continue to build on this foundation. We will focus on the controlled rollout and expansion of our local presence and make sure that everyone’s roles and responsibilities are clear, so we can ensure efficient operations and compliance with internal and external regulations.

We will further develop our IT and management information systems to adequately support the organisation. We will also make sure our quality management system continues to meet the ISO and Partos standards and prepare for the CBF’s new recognition system (which is replacing the former seal of approval). The outcome of the risk analysis we will be performing throughout the year will guide us in continuously improving our policies, procedures and systems.

Our people are key to Simavi’s success. Simavi employees are experienced and engaged professionals, eager to learn and to grow, creative, and constantly working on both their personal development and that of Simavi as a whole. Together, we’ve built a powerful organisation that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship. We will strive to enhance our personal, team and organisational performance by following the accredited Insights Discovery organisational development programme. This will provide us with further self-insight, make our interactions more effective, and thus boost our organisational development.

We strive to maintain a culture in which we focus not only on performance, but also on the health and well-being of our organisation and our co-workers. Safe and sound working conditions play an important role in this. In 2016 we will explore how we can improve our home office environment, which currently is not optimal.

Our outlook for 2016

85

7.5 Financial outlook

Several important and sizeable programmes ended in 2015. At the beginning of last year, it was unclear whether we would be able to find sufficient funding to keep our activities at the desired level. We put in a great deal of effort to set up and fund new programmes, and we are happy to report that we succeeded. In 2016 we will launch five new WASH programmes.

We will also launch five new SRHR programmes. All together, these new programmes and our existing ones bring our projected revenue to €18.2 million in 2016. We have also secured the majority of the funding we will need until 2020. Nevertheless, we will have to work hard to ensure that our funding consistently reaches the levels needed to achieve our ambitions.

But we are off to a truly excellent start, and we’re confident that we have created a stable financial basis for a sound and modern CSO, ready to meet the future.

In 2016 we expect to spend €16.8 million on our objectives, which is 92% of our total income.

The cost of direct fundraising is budgeted at 21% of income from direct fundraising. Both percentages are in line with Simavi’s cost structure policy.

2016 budget INCOME (x 1,000 Euro)

Budget 2016

Income from direct fundraising Collections

2,754

Sponsoring

100

Legacies and bequests

pm 2,854

Income from third-party campaigns The Dutch Postcode Lottery

940

Co-financing projects Aqua for All

280

Co-financing projects other

25 1,245

Government grants Dutch Ministery of Foreign Affairs for Simavi

9,067

Dutch Ministery of Foreign Affairs for Alliance partners

3,353

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

1,675 14,095

Interest income TOTAL INCOME

86

Our outlook for 2016

20 18,214

EXPENDITURE (x 1,000 Euro)

Budget 2016

SPENT ON OBJECTIVES Awareness raising

905

Programmes - Simavi projects - Paid to Alliance partners Advocacy

12,321 3,353 184 16,763

COSTS OF GENERATING FUNDS Costs of direct fundraising

592 67

Costs of third-party campaigns Costs of obtaining government grants

367 1,026

Management & administration costs TOTAL EXPENDITURE RESULT

735 18,524 -310

Our outlook for 2016

87

Annex 1: Programme results overview 2015 TOTAL targets

TOTAL realised

Unite for Body Rights (UFBR)

Making Periods Normal

MKAJI Programme

Simavi Health Programme

COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT

Total

Total

target

realisation

target

realisation

target

realisation

target

reali

# people directly reached with education on SRHR/WASH (indicators 1001, 1003, 1004)

2,394,099

4,781,634

1,055,454

2,307,605

27,667

36,225

0

444

26,314

53,4

# persons trained to build awareness

31,628

53,335

16,100

21,648

3,454

2,469

n/a

222

2,466

5,59

# people who participated in awareness raising

2,342,789

4,700,858

1,031,714

2,274,595

24,213

33,756

n/a

n/a

22,000

45,4

# members of community group trained

19,682

27,441

7,640

11,362

n/a

0

n/a

222

1,848

2,44

# people reached through mass media

9,832,412

29,265,968

3,593,148

7,085,505

44,281

68,709

n/a

n/a

35,000

22,0

# community groups organizing SRHR/WASH activities

726

1,312

n/a

0

n/a

0

40

22

14

166

# people with healthier behaviour

107,677

168,859

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

1,10

# community groups with new collaboration

24

34

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

8

# women who know SRH measures

5,731,911

4,178,966

4,066,565

2,953,686

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

0

TOTAL targets

TOTAL realised

Unite for Body Rights (UFBR)

Making Periods Normal

MKAJI Programme

Simavi Health Programme

ENABLING ENVIRONMENT

Total

Total

target

realisation

target

realisation

target

realisation

target

reali

# people who learned about social accountability or trained on policy influencing (indicators 2006 and 2004)

1,655

2,388

n/a

n/a

0

0

0

0

249

759

# times social accountability tool applied

79

125

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

64

63

Progress in policies

7

11

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

3

5

# countries with increased SRHR/WASH budget

6

4

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

0

# recommendations or lobby issues taken over by authorities

7

9

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

4

# membership in partners country

118

222

101

133

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

4

# representatives at advocacy meetings

609

1,926

390

483

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

4

4

88

Annex

Dutch WASH Alliance

Unite against Child Marriage

Football for Water GhanaNetherlands WASH Programme (GNWP)

Access to Services and Knowledge (ASK)

Improved WASH Services in Dhaka

isation

target

realisation

target

realisation

target

realisation

target*

realisation

target

realisation

target

realisation

492

358,521

168,325

159,211

207,531

0

61,720

11,402

7,574

751,815

1,932,538

3,715

6,180

94

n/a

214

5,450

12,038

n/a

1,045

164

95

2,174

7,830

1,820

2,180

451

357,033

162,522

150,880

191,310

n/a

59,521

10,798

7,175

744,331

1,924,708

1,820

1,820

47

1,488

5,589

2,881

4,183

n/a

1,154

440

304

5,310

n/a

75

2,180

013

5,841,639

15,844,393

300,500

3,257,816

n/a

2,950,000

n/a

n/a

17,844

37,532

n/a

n/a

599

382

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

0

68

740

5

2

107,677

165,572

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

2.180

24

24

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

2

n/a

n/a

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

1,665,346

1,225,280

n/a

n/a

07

isation

Dutch WASH Alliance

Unite against Child Marriage

Football for Water GhanaNetherlands WASH Programme (GNWP)

Access to Services and Knowledge (ASK)

Improved WASH Services in Dhaka

target

realisation

target

realisation

target

realisation

target*

realisation

target

realisation

target

realisation

1,327

1,521

0

0

0

84

79

24

0

0

0

0

15

62

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

4

6

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

6

4

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

7

4

n/a

0

n/a

1

n/a

n/a

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

6

19

6

56

n/a

n/a

5

5

n/a

0

n/a

5

139

1,307

32

77

n/a

2

n/a

n/a

44

53

n/a

n/a

Annex

89

Annex 1: Programme results overview 2015 (continued) TOTAL targets

TOTAL realised

Unite for Body Rights (UFBR)

Making Periods Normal

MKAJI Programme

Simavi Health Programme

SUSTAINABLE SERVICES

Total

Total

target

realisation

target

realisation

target

realisation

target

reali

# people utilising SRHR facilities and services

n/a

205,762

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

# people utilising WASH

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

22,860

28,222

529,586

942,

# SRHR services provided

660,659

9,831,782

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

7,501

587,010

n/a

n/a

# people access to improved sanitation services

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

40,775

52,509

70,525

139,

# households with access to water

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

11,100

5,698

39,254

48,3

# health workers trained

12,684

7,309

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

14

14

n/a

n/a

# public places with improved WASH facilities

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

60

33

80

34

24

83

# water points rehabilitated or constructed

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

270

98

69

82

# sanitation seats in public places

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

21

80

43

48

65

90

Annex

Dutch WASH Alliance

Unite against Child Marriage

GhanaNetherlands WASH Programme (GNWP)

Football for Water

Access to Services and Knowledge (ASK)

Improved WASH Services in Dhaka

target

realisation

target

realisation

target

realisation

target*

realisation

target

realisation

target

realisation

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

1,665,346

1,171,382

n/a

n/a

3,715

6,180

n/a

n/a

n/a

0

1,798

0

n/a

n/a

10,345

n/a

1,820

2,180

20,320

37,377

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

5,842,034

9,065,466

n/a

n/a

1,820

1,820

,313

n/a

n/a

n/a

536

1,798

950

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

75

2,180

330

n/a

n/a

n/a

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

200

n/a

n/a

n/a

239

587

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

824

1,585

n/a

n/a

5

2

n/a

n/a

n/a

132

45

53

n/a

n/a

157

107

n/a

2,180

n/a

n/a

n/a

90

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

107

107

n/a

2

n/a

n/a

n/a

176

242

80

n/a

n/a

50

40

n/a

isation

,349

Annex

91

PART II REPORT OF THE SUPERVISORY BOARD

92

Strategy

Strategy

93

The accountability and responsibilities of Simavi’s supervisory board are described in the organisation’s Declaration of Accountability (see http://simavi.org/declaration-ofaccountability/).

About the supervisory board • All members of Simavi’s supervisory board and Simavi’s management team have endorsed and approved the Declaration of Accountability. Throughout 2015 the supervisory board and management operated fully according to the declaration’s rules and intent.

• The supervisory board is the managing director’s employer and supervisor and acts as her advisor. The board itself has no management or operational tasks.

• Board members are recruited based on pre-agreed and specific profiles to ensure the board’s composition encompasses diverse areas of expertise. Vacancies are publicised through public advertising.

• The supervisory board appoints new board members. The managing director acts as an advisor in the assessment and selection procedure.

Composition As of 31 December 2015, Simavi’s supervisory board was composed as follows Members supervisory board

Maria Martens, chair, remuneration committee

94

Area of expertise

Politics, management

Current position

Other ancillary positions

Member of the Dutch Senate

VSOP supervisory board, chairwoman (to July 2015) ‘s Heeren Loo Zorggroep supervisory board, member Groningen University Medical Centre, lecturer NVTG International Safe Motherhood & International Health, member of working party

Esther Scheers, vice chair

Public health, reproductive health, tropical medicine

Gynaecologist

Frans Blanchard, audit committee

Communications

Legal advisor in the – creative industry

Laura de Graaf, audit committee

Finance

Finance manager at the NDSM Foundation

–

Michiel de Wilde

Strategy and organisation, international development, corporate social responsibility

Executive director at Erasmus Centre for Strategic Philanthropy

Boer & Croon Management, parttime coach for young executives

Jeroen Wels, remuneration committee

Human resources management

Vice president of human resources at – Unilever

Report of the supervisory board

Rotation and election procedure Supervisory board members are appointed for a maximum of two four-year terms. The board’s rotation schedule is as follows:

Supervisory board members

Appointed as of

End of first term

End of second term

Frans Blanchard

2008 (November)

2012

2016

Maria Martens

2010 (July)

2014

2018

Laura de Graaf

2011 (July)

2015

2019

Esther Scheers

2012 (June)

2016

2020

Michiel de Wilde

2014 (November)

2018

2022

Jeroen Wels

2014 (November)

2018

2022

Recent changes • Laura de Graaf was appointed for a second term from July 2015 to July 2019 during the board meeting in February 2015.

• Esther Scheers was appointed for a second term from July 2016 to July 2020 during the board meeting in November 2015.

• Frans Blanchard will leave the board in November 2016, when he reaches the end of his two allowed terms of office. The procedure to find a new member has been started.

Compensation The remuneration policy for the supervisory board remains unchanged. Members of the board do not receive any form of compensation. Expenses are reimbursed based on actual expenses incurred.

Supervisory board meetings in 2015 The board convened five times in 2015. In addition to the regular board meetings, individual board members attended several meetings with a variety of stakeholders, accompanied by members of the management team. The standard agenda items for supervisory board meetings are as follows: • the annual plan and budget • the annual report • alliances • external campaigns and activities • formal audits, evaluations and risk assessments • progress on professionalising the organisation, its capabilities and the strength of the management team (including the annual assessment of Simavi’s managing director)

Report of the supervisory board

95

In addition to the standard agenda items, the board also discussed the following items this year: • Simavi’s 2016–2020 strategy • employee satisfaction • updates to Simavi’s governance and statutes • Simavi’s 90th anniversary • The REAL Partnership22

2015 in review 2015 was an important year for Simavi. Amid significant global events and developments, the organisation was focused on the key topic of securing new funding and, with it, financial stability. It was crucial that Simavi create continuity in this pivotal year, so that it can deliver on its ambitious goal to improve the basic health of 10 million people by 2020. The second year of Simavi’s renewed organisational strategy brought satisfying results in terms of realised programme objectives and financial targets. Because the government’s MFS II development aid co-financing system for the 2011–2015 period came to a close in December, the organisation was also engaged in close monitoring of its progress towards the agreed outcomes.

Simavi’s management team and employees succeeded in building a strong and healthy budget for 2016. The board deeply thanks them all for the commitment, passion and stamina they demonstrated throughout the year.

In 2015 Simavi began a strategic review, which will continue in 2016. The aim is to enable Simavi to make even better choices, thereby ensuring that its WASH and SRHR interventions will lead to the envisioned health improvements for the targeted 10 million people in an effective and impactful way. The supervisory board will be closely involved in this review.

As an organisation, Simavi is on a path of continuous improvement and further professionalisation. Continuing the trend of previous years, 2015 saw further progress.

The employee satisfaction survey shows stable results compared to last year in a financially insecure period of time. 88% of all employees have confidence in Simavi’s future, and trust in the management team further increased from 80% to 88%. A point to watch out for is increased employee stress, though absenteeism stayed stable at 3.2%.

Evaluation of the managing director Each year the supervisory board – through its remuneration committee – reviews the managing director’s performance and discusses her personal development goals for the coming year. The board is very satisfied with Ariette Brouwer and expressed its continued confidence in her.

Audit committee The audit committee convened five times in 2015. Its meetings took place about two weeks before regular board meetings. Simavi’s managing director and director of finance and operations also attended. Topics included the annual and quarterly reports, the auditor’s report, the budget and forecasts. The external auditor also participated in the discussions of the annual accounts and the auditor’s report.

22 In January 2015, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected our grant proposal for the REAL Partnership, which Simavi submitted under the Dialogue and Dissent funding call. After an internal hearing with the ministry and internal consultations, Simavi decided to file a formal appeal against this decision based on content-related and procedural grounds.

96

Report of the supervisory board

Evaluation of the board In accordance with Simavi’s governance code, the supervisory board evaluates its own performance once every two years. The next evaluation will take place in 2016.

Recognition The supervisory board deeply thanks Simavi’s volunteers, employees and management team for their hard work and commitment in 2015. The board also thanks Simavi’s Dutch and international stakeholders and partners in the field for their cooperation and their impactful work on the ground.

The board looks to the future in full confidence that Simavi’s aim to improve the health of more than 10 million people by 2020 will be realised.

Report of the supervisory board

97

PART III ANNUAL ACCOUNTS

98

Strategy

Strategy

99

Annual Accounts

Balance Sheet as per December 31, 2015 (after appropriation of result) ASSETS (x 1,000 Euro) TANGIBLE FIXED ASSETS

Note

31-12-2015

31-12-2014

1

88

72

9

58

26

49

CURRENT ASSETS Receivables and accrued income Bequests to be received

2 2.1

Interest to be received Grants to be received

11

1,147

220

Other receivables and prepaid expens-

2.2

225

464

1,407

791

5,704

9,562

7,199

10,425

31-12-2015

31-12-2014

CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS

3

TOTAL ASSETS

LIABILITIES (x 1,000 Euro) RESERVES AND FUNDS

Note

*

4 *

Continuity reserve

4.1

2,212

2,212

Reserve for financing assets

4.2

88

72

Earmarked reserves

4.3

862

933

Earmarked funds

4.4

495

499

3,657

3,716

5

43

200

5

311

1,275

77

68

* *

LONG-TERM LIABILITIES Project/programme commitments

SHORT-TERM LIABILITIES Project/programme commitments Taxes and social insurance premiums Other liabilities and accruals

6

856

628

Deferred income

7

2,255

4,538

3,499

6,509

7,199

10,425

TOTAL LIABILITIES *restated for comparison purposes

100

Annual accounts

Statement of Income and Expenditure for the year 2015 INCOME (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

37

30

442

1,789

2,141

1,957

Sponsoring

101

-

84

Legacies and bequests

719

pm

104

2,646

2,171

2,587

1,595

1,145

1,943

139

100

276

14

30

66

1,748

1,275

2,285

Dutch Ministery of Foreign Affairs for Simavi

9,379

8,696

8,568

Dutch Ministery of Foreign Affairs for Alliance partners

5,681

5,540

7,011

898

1,223

420

15,958

15,459

15,999

46

94

92

21

-

60

20,419

18,999

21,023

Income from direct fundraising

Note

9

Collections Donations and gifts

Total

Income from third-party campaigns

10

The Dutch Postcode Lottery Co-financing projects Aqua for All Co-financing projects other Total

Government grants

11

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation Total

Interest income

Other Income TOTAL INCOME

12

Annual accounts

101

Statement of Income and Expenditure for the year 2015 - continued EXPENDITURE (x 1,000 Euro) SPENT ON OBJECTIVES

Note

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

1,254

1,031

1,191

11,602

10,874

11,055

5,681

5,540

7,011

347

351

354

18,884

17,796

19,611

497

512

504

5

17

122

299

304

222

-

-

1

801

832

849

13

Awareness raising Programmes - Simavi projects - Paid to Alliance partners Advocacy Total

COSTS OF GENERATING FUNDS Costs of direct fundraising

14

Costs of third-party campaigns Costs of obtaining government grants Costs of investments Total

Management & administration costs

15

793

889

929

TOTAL EXPENDITURE

16

20,478

19,517

21,389

-59

-518

-366

RESULT Appropriation of result Withdrawal from earmarked reserve - Projects

-181

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve - Football for Water programme

-292

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve - Capacity building

-96

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve - Strategic development

-23

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve - Simavi 90 jaar Withdrawal from earmarked funds - Interest

-100 -33

Addition to earmarked reserve - Strategic development

50

Addition to earmarked reserve - Fundraising legacies

120

Addition to earmarked reserve - Projects

451

Addition to reserve - Financing assets

16

Addition to earmarked funds - Interest

29 -59

102

Annual accounts

Cash Flow Statement for the year 2015 CASH FLOW STATEMENT (x 1,000 Euro)

2015

2014

-59

-366

22

29

-46

-92

-83

-429

-639

315

-3,010

2,229

-157

-8

69

92

-3,820

2,199

-38

-69

-3,858

2,130

Balance of cash/cash equivalents on 1 January

9,562

7,432

*

Balance of cash/cash equivalents on 31 December

5,704

9,562

*

-3,858

2,130

RESULT Adjustment for depreciation Adjustment for interest income

*

Changes in operating capital Change in receivables Change in short-term liabilities Change in long-term liabilities project/programme commitments

Interest received

CASH FLOW FROM OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES

*

CASH FLOW FROM INVESTMENT ACTIVITIES Investments in tangible fixed assets Change in cash and cash equivalents

Change in cash and cash equivalents *restated for comparison purposes

Annual accounts

103

Accounting polices

General The annual accounts have been prepared in accordance with the Dutch Accounting Standard for Fundraising Institutions (RJ 650) and are subject to the “Wet Normering bezoldiging Topfunctionarissen publieke en semi publieke sector� (WNT). The annual accounts aim to provide a fair presentation of the financial position of Stichting Simavi, Fonteinlaan 5, 2112 JG Haarlem, The Netherlands (Simavi), as of December 31, 2015, and of its income and expenditure for the year 2015. The financial year coincides with the calendar year. The annual accounts are drawn up on the basis of continuity.

With reference to the Netherlands Civil Code, Title 9, Article 407 1a, Section 13, the financial data of Stichting NFICH and Stichting Zien have not been consolidated. The current accounts between Simavi and these foundations are reported under Other liabilities and accruals (see note 6).

Functional and reporting currency The annual accounts are denominated in euros, Simavi’s functional and reporting currency.

Transactions denominated in foreign currencies conducted during the reporting period are recognised in the annual accounts at the rate of exchange on the transaction date. Monetary assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currencies are translated into the functional currency at the rate of exchange at the reporting date. Any resulting exchange differences are recognised in the statement of income and expenditure Use of estimates In applying the accounting policies and standards for preparing annual accounts, the management of Simavi is required to make estimates and judgments that might significantly influence the amounts disclosed in the annual accounts. If necessary for the purposes of providing the insight required under Section 362(1), Book 2 of the Netherlands Civil Code, the nature of these estimates and judgments, including the related assumptions, has been disclosed in the notes to the relevant items. Simavi did not change its policies for accounting estimates compared to the previous year.

Basis of measurement Unless indicated otherwise, the annual accounts have been prepared using the historical cost basis.

Impairments Simavi assesses at each reporting date whether there is any evidence of assets being subject to impairment. If any such evidence exists, the recoverable amount of the relevant asset is determined. An asset is subject to impairment if its carrying amount is higher than its recoverable amount; the recoverable amount is the higher of net realizable value and value in use. If it is established that a previously recognized impairment loss no longer applies or has declined, the increased carrying amount of the asset in question is not set higher than the carrying amount that would have been determined had no impairment loss been recognized.

The net realizable value is determined based on the active market. An impairment loss is directly expensed in the income statement.

Tangible fixed assets Tangible assets are carried at cost less straight-line depreciation over their estimated useful lives. The percentages used are: Equipment: 10 %; Office machines: 20 %; Computers and software: 20 - 33 %.

Simavi has been located at a rented property since May 2005.

Financial instruments Financial instruments include receivables, cash and cash equivalents, project/programme commitments, accounts payable, and other payables. Financial instruments are initially recognised at fair value. Any directly attributable transaction costs are part of this initial

104

Annual accounts

valuation. Financial instruments are subsequently valued in the manner described below.

Receivables and accrued income Receivables and accrued income are initially stated at fair value, and are subsequently valued at amortised cost. An allowance is made for obsolescence where necessary.

Reserves In order to secure the continuity of the foundation in case of unexpected events, part of Simavi’s capital has been transferred to a separate continuity reserve. The size is in accordance with CBF regulations and is aimed to meet legal and moral obligations in case of a significant fall in income.

Simavi holds a reserve for financing fixed assets to guarantee replacement of these assets in the future.Earmarked reserves are held for different purposes as determined by management. Management of Simavi can change the specific earmark of reserves, when deemed appropriate.

Earmarked funds The earmarked funds represent all received earmarked income that the donor intended for a specific purpose, for which the underlying objective and related expenditure have not yet been realised. Furthermore, earmarked funds are held for accumulated interest income earned on the advance payments of grants in respect of the WASH, SRHR, ASK and MKAJI programmes. The earmarked funds are expected to be used within 3 years or in case of interest from grants during the remaining project period of the grant. The restriction following the earmark can only be released by specific third party approval.

Financing contracts with government and other major donors Simavi signed financing contracts for carrying out specific projects. Simavi recognizes the incoming resources from these financing contracts and grant decisions at the time resources are actually expended. The difference between the income recognized and the actual amounts received in the form of contributions from donors is recorded in the balance sheet.

This results in receivables if more resources have been expended than received or in deferred grants if incoming amounts are greater than those expended. Therefore the full amount of the contract is not disclosed in the annual accounts.

Pension scheme Simavi’s pension scheme is managed by life insurance company Delta Lloyd. The scheme is based on an average salary system. For employees who joined before December 1, 2005 the scheme is based on a final salary system. All premiums pertaining to the reporting year are included under staff costs. Any premiums due at year end are included on the balance sheet under other liabilities, any premiums paid in access of the premiums due are included as prepaid expenses, in case these can be offset against future premiums due. There are no additional obligations arising from the management agreement with the pension insurer, the pension agreement with employees or other commitments to employees.

Project/programme commitments The grants unconditionally committed as of the balance sheet date, which have not been already paid, are divided into short-term liabilities and long-term liabilities. The amounts that are expected to be settled after more than one year after the balance sheet date, are accounted for as long-term liabilities. The expected duration of the projects/programmes is a maximum of five years.

Conversion of foreign currency Monetary assets and liabilities in foreign currency are converted into euros at the closing rate at year’s end. Exchange differences are accounted for in the statement of income and expenditure, where their method of presentation depends on the nature of the underlying asset or liability.

Annual accounts

105

Determination of results

Income from collections, donations and gifts and sponsoring Income from collections, donations and gifts and sponsoring is recognized in the year in which they are received, unless income is subject to conditions still to be met.

Income from legacies and bequests Legacies and bequests are accounted for as income in the year in which their amount can be reliably determined. Provisional payments are accounted for as income in the financial year in which they are received, in cases when a reliable estimate was not possible at an earlier time.

Income from third-party campaigns Income from third-party campaigns is accounted as such when Simavi carries no risk in the fundraising campaign.

This income is recognised in the year in which the proceeds are received.

Government grants Income from government grants that have been allocated by the donor depending on actual project costs will be accounted for in the statement of income and expenditure in the year that the eligible expenditure is recognised, it is probable that the amounts will be received and Simavi complied with all attached conditions. In this context, the (eligible) expenditure in respect of alliance partners in alliances where Simavi is the lead agency is equal to the amounts paid to these partners.

Differences between the (final) settlement of the grants and accumulated income are accounted for in the statement of income and expenditure in the year in which these differences can be reliably estimated.

Expenditure Amounts spent on Simavi projects and programmes are accounted for as expenses in the financial year in which the contribution has been unconditionally committed. The expenses recognised in the statement of income and expenditure include the related direct and indirect organisational costs.

Fundraising, awareness raising and management & administration costs are charged to the statement of income and expenditure in the year to which they pertain.

Salaries, wages and social security contributions are recognised in the statement of income and expenditure based on the pay and benefits package to the extent that they are payable to employees.

Expenditure allocation Expenditure allocation is described in note 16 of the notes to the statement of income and expenditure.

Interest income Interest income is recognised in the statement of income and expenditure time proportionally.

106

Annual accounts

Notes to the cash flow statement

The cash flow statement is prepared using the indirect method. To determine the change in cash and cash equivalents during the reporting period, the result for that year is adjusted for items in the statement of income and expenditure and for balance sheet movements that did not result in actual cash flows.

The cash flow statement makes a distinction between cash flow from operational, investment and financing activities. In this context, changes in long-term debts from project/programme commitments and interest income are presented as cash flow from operational activities.

The cash position of Simavi has decreased by an amount of €3,858K in 2015. This decrease is mainly resulting from a negative cash flow from operational activities of €3,820K (2014: €2,199K positive). In 2015 less grants were received, whereas the expenditure on projects was stable. The grants received in 2015 totalled to €13,386K. In 2014 these amounted to €17,254K (see note 11). The lower amount is due to the wrap up of a number of sizeable programmes. For the new programmes the first instalments will be received in 2016. At same time the amount of grants to be received increased from €220K in 2014 to €1,147K this year.

Where grants are normally received as prepayments, the last instalment for the completed programmes is only received after approval of the final report.

Annual accounts

107

Notes to the balance sheet

1.

Tangible fixed assets

Tangible fixed assets comprise of office machines and equipment, computers and software, which are used for operations only. The movements during the year can be specified as follows: (x 1,000 Euro)

2015

2014

Book value as at 1 January

72

32

Investments

38

69

-/- 22

-/- 29

88

72

133

134

Depreciation Book value as at 31 December Purchase prices of the tangible fixed assets

2.

Receivables and accrued income

2.1 Bequests to be received An amount of €9K (2014: €2K) of receivable bequests is expected to be settled after one year.

From a legacy Simavi obtained 15 certificates of shares (16.9% of the total shares) in Marnel Zaandam Beheer B.V. in Amsterdam. These certificates do not bear any voting rights. Simavi received a dividend of €6K which was accounted for as income from Legacies and bequests in 2015. Considering the uncertainty of future income from these certificates, the valuation is set to nil. Any future income from these certificates will be accounted for as soon as this income can be reliably determined.

2.2 Other receivables and prepaid expenses (x 1,000 Euro) Accounts receivable Prepaid expenses

2015

2014

147

190

78

274

225

464

All amounts are expected to be received or settled within one year after the balance sheet date.

3.

Cash and cash equivalents

The cash and cash equivalents are placed on interest-bearing current accounts or savings accounts. All amounts (total €5,704K) are available upon demand and placed at Dutch banking institutions. There are no cash or cash equivalents placed on deposit.

The average yield on outstanding cash and cash equivalents was 0.7 % in 2015 (1.2 % in 2014).

108

Annual accounts

4.

Reserves and funds

4.1 Continuity reserve (x 1,000 Euro)

Continuity reserve

31-12-2014

Withdrawal

Addition

31-12-2015

2,212

-

-

2,212

The continuity reserve is designed to create a sufficiently large buffer to enable Simavi to complete or terminate ongoing projects/programmes appropriately in case of a significant shortfall of key sources of funding. Furthermore, it includes funding necessary for actions to enable Simavi to rebuild such a shortfall or, in worst case, dissolve the organization, while still meeting legal and moral obligations.

To do this we envisage to require an equivalent of six to nine months of total operational expenditure, thus ranging between €1.8 and 2.8 million. The continuity reserve, after appropriation of result, amounts to €2,212K at the end of 2015.This is just over seven months and falls well within the indicated range. The continuity reserve is kept at the same level as last year. The risk perception is unchanged or even slightly decreased, as the expected funding for the coming years seems stable.

The maximum size for the continuity reserve, according to the assets’ guidelines set by the association for fund-raising institutions (Goede Doelen Nederland, former VFI), equals to one and a half times the annual operational costs of the organisation, based on the budget for the following year. This maximum amounts to €5.5 million as per 31 December 2015.

4.2 Reserve for financing assets (x 1,000 Euro)

Reserve for financing assets

31-12-2014

Withdrawal

Addition

31-12-2015

72

22

38

88

The reserve for financing assets matches the book value of the tangible fixed assets.

4.3 Earmarked reserves The earmarked reserves held by Simavi, including the movements in these reserves during the year, are specified below 31-12-2014

Withdrawal

Addition

31-12-2015

Football for water

307

292

-

15

Capacity building

223

96

-

127

Projects (third party financing)

234

181

-

53

-

-

451

451

69

23

50

96

100

100

-

-

-

-

120

120

933

692

621

862

(x 1,000 Euro) Purpose

Projects (own financing) Strategic development Simavi 90 years Fundraising Legacies Total earmarked reserves

Annual accounts

109

Football for Water In 2012, a fund was formed in the amount of €466K to cover expenditure for projects within the Football for Water programme in 2014 and 2015, for the part not financed by government grants. In 2015, €292K (2014: €159K) of the reserve was used and withdrawn from the reserve through the appropriation of result. The remainder (€15K) will be utilised in 2016. The programme runs until December 2016.

Capacity Building This fund was created in 2013 with the main aim of broadening and deepening our partner portfolio, in order to facilitate anticipated growth and attract new donors.

Management believes that new donors can currently only be attracted when Simavi has more capacity to accommodate more funds. The reserve can be used to identify new partners through identification missions, to invest in capacity strengthening of existing partners and identify new partners, and to offer small ‘start-up capital’ for initiating small programmes with them. In 2015, €96K (2014: € 17K) was spent on the identification missions and small programmes of partners.

Projects (third party financing) Amounts spent on Simavi projects are accounted for as expenses in the financial year in which the contribution is unconditionally committed. For projects that are still conditional upon realisation of future third party financing, Simavi formed a reserve that covers that part of total financing required out of Simavi’s own funds.

In 2015 €181K (2014: €469K) was used and withdrawn from the reserve through the appropriation of result. It is expected that the remainder (€53K) of the reserve will be utilised in 2016. The reservation was formed in 2013 for several multiple year contracts of projects which are partly financed by foundations and or companies. All contracts of these projects will end in 2016.

Projects (own financing) In 2015 an amount of €451K was added to the reserve. These funds will be used in the coming years to match funds of institutional foundations to realise projects and to finance projects out of own funds for which no funding is jet available from other sources.

Strategic Development In 2014, a reserve was formed for Strategic Development to further develop Simavi into a strategic partner NGO for both national and international partners. Out of the withdrawal of €23K from this reserve, €19K was spent on establishing the local office in Indonesia. A further €50K was added to this reserve to strengthen this process in 2016. The reserve will be spent on partner identification, our involvement in international platforms and establishing field offices to further promote our decentralization Legacies Fundraising campaign In order to ensure a continuous flow of legacies a multi-year plan has been developed to actively acquire future legacies from existing and new donors and to obtain insight in the size of currently existing (but latent) legacies. The communication and acquisition plan will be executed from 2016 upto2020. The total cost is estimated at €120K. During the project term the results will be monitored and if necessary the plan will be adapted.

Simavi 90 years The reserve “Simavi 90 years” was formed in 2014 to celebrate our 90 year anniversary in 2015. Several events were organised, such as the Day-of-Change and the celebration and photo exhibition of our work, in the presence of Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix. The entire reserve was used in 2015.

110

Annual accounts

4.4 Earmarked funds 31-12-2014

Withdrawal

Addition

31-12-2015

2

-

-

2

60

-

-

60

146

-

-

146

- SHAW

33

33

-

-

- WASH

141

-

11

152

- SRHR

83

-

2

85

- ASK

24

-

11

35

- MKAJI

10

-

5

15

Total earmarked funds

499

33

29

495

of which interest to be spent on objectives

291

33

29

287

(x 1,000 Euro) Purpose Children eye care Nepal Children eye care Irian Jaya Children eye care Africa Interest to be spent on objectives:

The assigned interest income on advance grant funding received, in the amount of €29K, has been added to the designated fund and will be applied towards the underlying goals. The SHAW project was finalised in 2015, the accrued interest was included in the financial round off. For the children eye care funds in Africa and Irian Jaya projects have been identified and approved. These projects are planned to start in 2016.

5.

Project/programme commitments

Project and programme commitments consist of unconditional commitments with partner organisations in the South. The total amount of these commitments is €1,475K of which €1,275K will be settled in one year and €200K after one year. The long-term project/ programme commitments mainly relate to projects within the Dutch Postcode Lottery programme “Making Periods Normal” (project period 2014-2017).

6.

Other liabilities and accruals

(x 1,000 Euro)

2015

2014

549

366

Current account Stichting NFICH and ZIEN

82

77

Accrued vacation hours

34

35

100

105

91

45

856

628

Accounts payable

Accrued holiday allowance Accrued audit fees

Annual accounts

111

7.

Deferred income

(x 1,000 Euro)

2015

2014

Government grants

1,691

3,336

Making Periods Normal programme

370

1,065

Other projects

194

137

2,255

4,538

Further information on deferred income from government grants is provided in note 11.

The information on the deferred income from the Dutch Postcode Lottery (Making Periods Normal programme) is provided in note 10.

8.

Off balance sheet rights and obligations

Off-balance sheet rights In December 2014 the Netherlands Enterprise Agency granted Simavi a conditional subsidy for the project Healthy Business, Healthy Lives (HBHL). The total amount of this programme is €378K of which 75% is subsidised (€283K). Out of this amount €142K is received in 2015.

The programme runs from January 2015 till December 2016 and the last 10% (€28k) of the subsidy will be settled after determination of the total amount of the subsidy based on the final report.

In November 2015 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to award Simavi a grant for the programme Ritu, Promoting Menstrual Hygiene Management in Bangladesh. The grant award is conditional upon sufficient funds being made available in the budget by the government and parliament. The programme runs from November 2015 to April 2019 and the total amount of the grant is €3,454K. The last instalment (5% of the total budget) will be paid once the final amount of the grant has been determined. In December 2015 Simavi received the first instalment of €377K for the inception phase of this programme.

In December 2015 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to award the consortium of Solidaridad, Healthy Entrepreneurs and Simavi (lead), a grant for the programme Going for Gold. The grant is conditional upon sufficient funds being made available in the budget by government and parliament. The programme will run from January 2016 to December 2020 and the total amount of the grant is €7,996K (Simavi €3,399K). After determination of the final amount of the grant in 2021 Simavi will receive the last instalment (maximum of 5% €400K).

The Strategic partnership Watershed, a consortium of IRC (lead), Wetlands International, Akvo and Simavi has been awarded a grant for the Watershed programme by Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The programme will run from January 2016 till December 2020, the total amount of the grant is €16,351K. (Simavi €4,268K). The grant is conditional upon sufficient funds being made available in the budget by government and parliament. The final payment of 1% (€165K) is received when the final amount of the grant has been determined by Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The More Than Brides alliance, a consortium of Save the children (lead), Oxfam Novib, Population Council and Simavi was awarded a grant of Ministry of Foreign affairs (SRGR Partnerschappen 2016-2020) in August 2015. The grant award is conditional upon sufficient funds being made available in the budget by the government and parliament. The total amount of the grant is €29,425K (Simavi €6,550K) and the programme of the alliance 112

Annual accounts

Marriage no child’s game will run from January 2016 till December 2020.

The Ministry of Foreign affairs (SRGR Partnerschappen 2016-2020) awarded the alliance Get Up Speak Out for your rights a grant in August 2015. The grant is conditional upon sufficient funds being made available in the budget by the government and parliament. The total amount of the grant is €39,950K. The allocation to the alliance members Rutgers WPF (lead), Choice, dance4life, IPPF, SAN and Simavi is still to be decided. The programme will start in 2016 and run until December 2020.

Simavi has received multiyear grants from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the period 2011 - 2015. The total amounts under these grants were subject to budget restrictions, so the Ministry can change its decision if there are insufficient resources in the government budget. For WASH, the amount of the grant is €45,459K for the total alliance. Simavi acts as the lead agency of this alliance. Out of this amount, €8,475K was received in 2015. The remainder, with a maximum of €454K, will be received after approval of the final report of the alliance in 2016.

For the ASK programme, Simavi (as alliance partner) is granted by Ministry of Foreign Affairs a conditional right of €3,847K for the period 2013-2015. Under this agreement Simavi will receive €33K, after approval of the final report on the alliance in 2016.

As an alliance partner of the Football for Water (F4W) programme, Simavi received a conditional multiyear grant of €610K (2012-2016). Under this agreement Simavi is also entitled to receive an amount of €24K in 2016 from the lead agency of this programme.

In 2014 Simavi signed a contract with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) for the MKAJI programme in Tanzania. The contract runs from April 2014 till March 2019 and the total conditional right of the contract amounts to $8,397K. Up to 2015 Simavi has received an amount of $2,500K, which was partly spent.

Legacies with usufruct Assets of legacies of which bare ownership of the assets has been obtained are not recognised in the balance sheet when third parties have usufruct rights, due to uncertainty about the size of future payments and the time of payment. This concerns five legacies (eight in 2014) encumbered with usufruct. Three legacies with usufruct were settled in 2015, of which the income is reported under Legacies and bequests.

Off-balance sheet obligations Under the framework of the F4W, GNWP, HBHL and MKAJI programmes, Simavi and its Southern partners entered into contractual commitments to carry out projects in areas where Simavi operates. Where these contracts depend on conditions that are yet to be met, such as the external grant allocation by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs or other parties, they have not been accounted for in the balance sheet as of 31 December 2015. These obligations amounted to €297K at the end of 2015 (2014: €4,612K).

Additionally, for other programme contracts, where contracts depend on conditions yet to be met, off balance sheet commitments exist in the amount of €332K at the end of 2015 (2014: €1,491K).

In the context of Simavi’s role as the lead agency of the WASH alliance and of the UaCM alliance, it has a contingent liability as of 31 December 2015 towards its alliance partners in the amount of €334K (2014: €5,540K).

Simavi is located at a rented premises. The rent amounts to €67K per year. A bank guarantee for this lease has been issued in the amount of €25K. Simavi can terminate this agreement taking into account a three months notice period.

Annual accounts

113

Notes on the statement of income and expenditure

9.

Income from direct fundraising

Simavi decided that 2014 would be the last year of the nationwide door-to-door collection.

This decision was made because the high costs of the collection did no longer weigh up to the benefits. The income from collections reported in 2015 (€37K) relates to the sale of the collection boxes.

The donations and gifts amounted to €1,789K which is lower than in 2014 (€1,957) and also lower than budgeted. This is mainly due to lower than expected income from institutional and corporate fundraising. In 2015 the income from private donors amounted to €954K (2014: €792K) and exceeded expectations.

Sponsoring yielded €101K (2014: €84K).

The income from legacies and bequests amounted to €719K (2014: €104K). Income from legacies and bequest is not budgeted given the uncertainties of this type of income.

10.

Income from third-party campaigns

Income from third-party campaigns mainly comprise of income from the Dutch Postcode Lottery. The latter can be specified as follows: (x 1,000 Euro)

2015

2014

The Dutch Postcode Lottery

900

900

Making Periods Normal project

695

998

-

45

1,595

1,943

PeePoo project

In 2015, Simavi received €900K as a contribution from the Dutch Postcode Lottery. In 2014 they awarded an additional project Making Periods Normal for a total amount of €2,064K. In 2015, an amount of €695K was committed or paid for this project; the remaining amount (€370K) is accounted for in the balance sheet as an advance contribution received from the Dutch Postcode Lottery as deferred income (see note 7).

In 2015, a sum of €139K (2014: €276K) was recognised as income for the contribution of Aqua for All with regard to WASH projects.

114

Annual accounts

11.

Government grants

The table below gives an overview of grants received from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

(x 1,000 Euro)

WASH

SRHR

SHAW

ASK

F4W

Grants received for Simavi

2,794

1,906

-

1,039

135

-

Grants received for alliance partners

5,681

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Total grants received

8,475

1,906

-

Add: 'Advance grants received as at 01-01-2015

1,108

151

Minus: 'Grant income accounted for in 2015 based on expenditures

9,092

Exchange rate correction MKAJI (USD/EURO)

Advance grants received as at 31-12-2015 Grants still to be received as at 31-12-2015 Allocated interest income on advances received

UaCM GNWP

HBHL

MKAJI

Ritu

Total

1,045

142

40

377

7,478

-

-

-

-

-

5,681

-

-

-

-

227

-

227

1,039

135

-

1,045

142

267

377

13,386

87

362

-144

186

-76

-

1,442

-

3,116

2,045

590

1,469

238

203

1,209

214

898

-

15,958

491

12

-

-

-

-

-

-

811

377

1,691

-

-

503

68

247

17

240

72

-

-

1,147

11

2

-

11

-

-

-

-

5

-

29

A positive balance between the grant funding received and the actual expenditure eligible for grant funding is presented in the balance sheet as advance government grants under deferred income (see note 7). In the event of a negative balance, these assets are presented in the balance sheet as grants to be received.

Note that the accounted income and expenditure can differ from what was reported to the related donor, as a consequence of their specific reporting or accounting requirements.

Grants from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs Simavi is the lead agency of the MFS II WASH alliance (2011-2015). Along with general responsibility, this means that Simavi receives all grant payments from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the WASH Alliance (in 2015, â‚Ź8,475K).

A portion of these payments are paid to alliance partners immediately, for the implementation of the projects they support (â‚Ź5,681K). These payments are recognised as income at the date of payment based on applicable accounting standards. The income from government grants based on eligible expenditure on programmes and costs of Simavi itself Annual accounts

115

in the WASH alliance amounted to €3,411K in 2015. Total income from the WASH alliance recognised in 2015 amounted to €9,092K. Under the MFS II SRHR alliance (2011-2015), Simavi received €1,906K in grant funding via the lead agency of that alliance, Rutgers WPF. Income from government grants recognised based on eligible expenditure amounted to €2,045K in 2015.

The SHAW programme was finalised in 2015. The total grant income accounted for in 2015 amounted to €590K. Grants to the amount of €503K are still to be received at the end of 2015.

For the ASK programme, Simavi received €1,039K in 2015 from the SRHR fund of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Income from government grants recognised based on eligible expenditure amounted to €1,469K in 2015. This programme started in 2013 and ended in 2015. The financial close off will be done early 2016.

For Football for Water (F4W), Simavi received €135K in 2015 and the income recognised based on eligible expenditure amounted to €238K. Grants to the amount of €247K are still to be received at the end of 2015.

The Unite against Child Marriage programme (UaCM) of which Simavi was the lead agency ran until October 2015. The total income from UaCM recognised in 2015 amounted to €203K. In 2015 €1,045K was received for the Ghana Netherlands WASH Programme (GNWP) and the total income recognised was €1,209K, of which €240K is still to be received at 31 December 2015. The total amount of the grant was €2,205K and the programme ran from January 2014 till June 2015.

The programme Healthy Business Healthy Lives in Uganda, funded by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, started in 2015. The total expenditure in 2015 was €214K and an amount of €72K is still to be received at the end of 2015.

In December 2015 the first instalment €377K for the inception phase of the “Ritu, Promoting Menstrual Hygiene Management in Bangladesh” programme was received. There was no expenditure for this programme in 2015.

Other government grants Simavi received a grant from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of €1,902K ($2,500K) for the 5-year programme Water for Community Health in the Dodoma Region in Tanzania (MKAJI programme) in 2014. The total amount for the programme is $8,397K and it runs from April 2014 until March 2019. Income based on eligible expenditure amounted to €898K in 2015. As the programme liability at yearend is denominated in US dollars, a correction for exchange rate differences (€227K) has been made to compensate for the appreciation of the US dollar against the Euro. This exchange rate difference was partly offset by the exchange gain on US dollar liquidities. The balance is reported under expenditure on Simavi project activities.

Interest allocated on advance grant funding received from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), in the amount of €29K (2014: €70K), has been added to the earmarked funds (see note 4.4) and will be spent according to the underlying objectives.

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Annual accounts

12.

Other income

Other income results from fees received for services provided to third parties by Simavi staff.

13.

Expenditure on objectives

(x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

1,254

1,031

1,191

11,602

10,874

11,055

Objective: Project activities through alliance partners WASH

5,681

5,540

6,224

Objective: Project activities through alliance partners UaCM

-

-

787

347

351

354

18,884

17,796

19,611

Objective: Awareness raising Objective: Project activities

Objective: Advocacy Total spent on objectives

The actual expenditure on objectives is â‚Ź1,088K higher than budgeted. The difference between budget and amounts actually spent is mainly caused by more expenditure on project activities than planned, compensating the delays from 2014 within the WASH programmes in Tanzania and Ghana.

Spending percentage The ratio of the total expenditure on objectives as a percentage of the total income is presented in the following table. (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2014

Budget 2014

Actual 2013

Total spent on objectives

18,884

17,796

19,611

Total income

20,419

18,999

21,023

Spending percentage

92.5%

93.7%

93.3%

The percentage expenditure on objectives of total income in 2015 was 92.5%, as compared to 93.3% in 2014 and 93.7% as budgeted. The slightly lower percentage in 2015 is mainly due to timing differences between recognising the income of own fundraising and the actual expenditure thereof, as accounted for through the use of earmarked reserves.

Corrected for the effect of payments to the WASH alliance partners, the percentage was 89.6% in 2015 (89.9% in 2014).

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117

14.

Costs of direct fundraising

(x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

179

176

186

-

-

9

266

281

272

Acquisition of new donors

-

3

1

Legacies and bequests

4

-

5

Corporate fundraising

5

18

3

43

34

28

497

512

504

Operating costs of internal organisation Collection Newsletter and mailings

Walking for Water

The expenditure on fundraising is slightly lower than budgeted and also slightly lower than the actual expenditure in 2014. The newsletter and mailings account for the major part of the costs. We have concluded that these investments are worthwhile and create us a solid and growing private donor base. (x 1,000 Euro)

Income from direct fundraising

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

2,646

2,171

2,587

497

512

504

18.8%

23.6%

19.5%

Costs of direct fundraising Fundraising cost percentage

The cost percentage of fundraising is 18.8% in 2015 (19.5% in 2014) and is well below the 2015 budget as a result of the income from legacies and bequests. The actual cost percentage is significantly lower than the maximum standard of 25% set by the CBF.

15.

Management & administration costs

(x 1,000 Euro)

Management & administration costs Total expenditure Percentage management & adminstration cost

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

793

889

929

20,478

19,517

21,389

3.9%

4.6%

4.3%

The decrease in management & administration costs in 2015, as compared to 2014, is due to the reorganization in 2014 where severance payments had to be made. Also the actual office expenditure was lower than budgeted in 2015. As a result the costs for management and administration, expressed as a percentage of total expenditure, decreased to 3.9% in 2015 (4.3% in 2014).

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Auditors costs The following fees have been charged by the auditors over 2015. (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

Audit of the Financial Statements

84

51

67

Audit contracts institutional donors

49

31

35

The 2015 costs for the audit of the Financial Statements include an amount of â‚Ź33K that is related to additional audit verification work performed on the 2014 Financial Statements.

The amounts for the audit contracts institutional donors are allocated to the projects were applicable. In these cost an amount of â‚Ź5K is included for additional audit verification of the MKAJI project over 2014.

Five contracts of institutional donors required audited reports in 2015, this is the same number as in 2014.

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119

16.

Notes to expenditure allocation

Use

Objective Awareness raising

Programmes

Advocacy

-

15,587

-

Publicity and communication and outsourced work

841

241

87

Staff costs

370

1,307

234

Accommodation costs

20

67

12

Office and general expenses

20

71

12

3

10

2

1,254

17,283

347

EXPENDITURE (x 1,000 Euro) Grants and contributions

Depreciation Total

All direct and indirect costs are allocated to 1) the three objectives of Simavi, which are Awareness raising, Programmes and Advocacy; 2) to the costs of generating funds; and 3) to management & administration costs.

Apart from direct costs spent on Simavi projects/programmes, all other out of pocket costs that can be directly allocated to the objectives and fund generation are specified under Publicity and communication and outsourced work.

The costs for the annual report (€25K) are included under Management & administration (Office and general expenses). The costs for the website (€51K) are shown on the line Publicity and communication and outsourced work, under the objective Awareness raising.

All indirect costs, such as staff, accommodation, office and general expenses and depreciation are allocated based on the number of hours employees spent on the aforementioned components. A calculation of the hours spent is made for every employee.

This calculation is based on the employee’s job description, is reviewed by Simavi’s management team and is approved by the Managing Director.

Management & Administration costs include all administrative and secretarial hours, as well as all hours classified by the organisation as overhead, such as meetings with the Supervisory Board and other meetings intended to provide guidance and direction to the organisation.

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Annual accounts

Generating Funds

Management & Administration

Total 2015

Budget 2015

Total 2014

Fundraising

Campaigns Third Parties

Grants

-

-

-

-

15,587

14,904

16,404

318

-

81

-

1,568

1,308

1,498

161

5

196

581

2,854

2,817

2,945

8

-

10

30

147

180

149

9

-

11

178

301

279

364

1

-

1

4

21

29

29

497

5

299

793

20,478

19,517

21,389

Annual accounts

121

17.

Notes to staff costs

STAFF COSTS (x 1,000 Euro) Salaries in the Netherlands Social insurance premiums, insurances Costs of pension facilities Other staff costs

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

2,175

2,144

2,176

403

388

402

98

133

122

178

152

245

2,854

2,817

2,945

For information about the allocation of staff costs to the different categories of expenditure presented in the statement of income and expenditure reference is made to note 16.

The staff costs are stable compared to 2014. The other costs are lower due to the severance payments made in 2014. The cost of pension facilities are lower due to a correction made in 2015 on the 2014 expenditure.

The development of the number of staffing is as follows: AVERAGE NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

53.3

47.6

50.0

In Indonesia through partner organisations

2.3

2.5

4.0

In Tanzania local office

3.4

4.0

-

ACTUAL FTEs

Actual 2015

Budget 2015

Actual 2014

In Dutch office

48.4

46.0

45.9

In Indonesia through partner organisations

2.3

2.5

4.0

In Tanzania local office

3.1

4.0

-

In Dutch office

The average number of employees in FTE is higher than budget. This is due to a number of temporary contracts for some special project assignments and the replacement during illness and pregnancy leave.

Management model and remuneration Simavi has a Supervisory Board for monitoring, supervising and giving advice, and a one person Executive Board (the Managing Director) for the implementation of Simavi’s Strategy and its day-to-day management. Notes can be found in Chapter 5.3 of the annual report.

Remuneration of Supervisory Board The Supervisory Board determines the remuneration policy, the level of executive remuneration and other fixed remuneration components. The policy is reviewed periodically. Simavi follows the guidelines of Goede Doelen Nederland, former VFI, laid 122

Annual accounts

down in the Advisory Guidelines for the Remuneration of Executives of Charities and the Wijffels Code (see www.goededoelennederland.nl) in determining the remuneration policy and setting remuneration levels.

The maximum individual executive remuneration according to the WNT for development cooperation organizations is €163,000 for 2015. The Managing Director, Ms Ariette Brouwer, received a gross salary, including holyday allowance, of €97,951 in 2015 (2014: €96,111). The Managing Director did not receive any bonuses, loans, advance payments or guarantees. The 2015 employer’s contribution to the pension scheme of the Managing Director amounted to €9,657 (2014 €9,846). Allowances for expenses are only granted based on actual costs incurred, and contain no remuneration elements. Simavi does not provide lease cars. The Managing Director receives an untaxable commuting allowance of €2,766 per year.

(x 1 Euro)

2015

2014

1/1 - 31/12

1/1 - 31/12

Employment in FTE

1.0

1.0

Former executive

no

no

Formal employment

yes

yes

163,000

158,000

97,951

96,111

-

-

9,657

9,846

107,608

105,957

Name: A.D. Brouwer Managing Director

Term of employment

Individual WNT maximum

Total remuneration Remuneration Taxable expense reimbursements Remunerations payable in future Total remuneration

Also no other staff member received a remuneration exceeding the individual WNT maximum. No severance payments were made to employees that must be (or should have been) reported based on the WNT in 2015 or previous years.

Remuneration of Simavi’s Goodwill Ambassador Ms Dieuwertje Blok, Simavi’s Goodwill Ambassador, carried out her activities without receiving remuneration.

Annual accounts

123

18.

Multi-year income analysis

Below is an overview of the development of Simavi’s income over the past six years (x 1,000 Euro).

Collections

Individual giving

Foundations, private sector and sponsoring

Legacies and bequests

Thirdparty campaigns

Goverment Grants

Other

Total income

2010

601

624

525

859

1,525

4,583

286

9,003

2011

632

535

850

470

2,091

10,969

296

15,843

2012

578

701

975

-303

1,375

12,531

213

16,070

2013

608

712

1,066

548

1,189

13,933

140

18,196

2014

442

792

1,249

104

2,285

15,999

152

21,023

2015

37

954

936

719

1,748

15,958

67

20,419

In 2013, Simavi decided that 2014 would be the last year of the nationwide door-to-door collection, since the high costs of the collection did no longer weigh up to the benefits. The amount shown under collection for 2015 is relating to the sale of the collection boxes.

The fall in income from the collection was partly compensated by the increase in individual giving in 2015. The individual giving shows a steady growth in the recent years. We aim to maintain this trend by active private fundraising activities.

The increase of income from foundations, private sector and sponsoring in the years 2013 and 2014 is related to the Walking for Water campaign and the increase of donations from foundations. In 2015 the income from foundations was importantly lower. This was mainly due to the effect of the timing of income recognition. Generation of income from foundations and the private sector remains an important focal point of our fundraising efforts.The amount received from legacies and bequests is volatile and unpredictable. The negative number in the table for the year 2012 relates to an impairment of a receivable from bequests recognised in earlier years.

Third-party campaigns include the contributions of the Dutch Postcode Lottery, Aqua for All and other third parties. The regular contribution of the Dutch Postcode Lottery was €900K. In addition, Simavi received a contribution for the Programme “Making Periods Normal” amounting to a total of €2,064K, €695K of which was recognised as income in 2015 (2014: €998K).

The amount of government grants has grown substantially in the past few years to the current €16 million level. A similar amount of government grants is expected for 2016.

Haarlem, April 21, 2016

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Annual accounts

Executive board

Supervisory board

Ariette Brouwer

Maria Martens (Chairman) Esther Scheers (Vice-Chairman) Frans Blanchard Laura de Graaf Jeroen Wels Michiel de Wilde

Annual accounts

125

PART IV OTHER INFORMATION

126

Strategy

Strategy

127

Appropriation of result According to article 16.5 of the articles of association of Simavi, the Supervisory Board approves the annual accounts drawn up by the Executive Board. Included in the annual accounts is a proposal for the appropriation of the result for the year 2015. The appropriation of result takes into account the imposed restrictions on spending by third parties.

The result of the financial year 2015, is â‚Ź59K negative. The Executive Board proposes, with approval of the Supervisory Board, to appropriate the result for the year, in accordance with the overview provided in the Statement of Income and expenditure on page 97-98 and the explanation in note 4.

After balance sheet date information There have been no material post balance sheet events which would require adjustment to the financial statements of Simavi for the year 2015.

128

Other information

Independent auditor’s report To: the Supervisory Board of Stichting Simavi Report on the financial statements We have audited the accompanying financial statements 2015 of Stichting Simavi, Haarlem, which comprise the balance sheet as at 31 December 2015, the statement of income and expenditure for the year then ended and the notes comprising a summary of the accounting policies and other explanatory information.

The executive board’s responsibility The executive board of the Foundation is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements and for the preparation of annual report, both in accordance with the Guideline for annual reporting 650 ‘Fundraising Institutions’ of the Dutch Accounting Standards Board and the requirements of the Wet normering bezoldiging topfunctionarissen publieke en semipublieke sector (WNT). Furthermore, the executive board is responsible for such internal control as it determines is necessary to enable the preparation of the financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

Auditor’s responsibility Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these financial statements based on our audit. We conducted our audit in accordance with Dutch law, including the Dutch Standards on Auditing and the Controleprotocol WNT. This requires that we comply with ethical requirements and plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free from material misstatement.

An audit involves performing procedures to obtain audit evidence about the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. The procedures selected depend on the auditor’s judgment, including the assessment of the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to fraud or error. In making those risk assessments, the auditor considers internal control relevant to the entity’s preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the entity’s internal control. An audit also includes evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates made by the executive board, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements.

We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our audit opinion.

Opinion In our opinion, the financial statements give a true and fair view of the financial position of Stichting Simavi as at 31 December 2015, and of its result for the year then ended in accordance with the Guideline for annual reporting 650 ‘Fundraising Institutions’ of the Dutch Accounting Standards Board and the requirements of WNT. Report on annual report We have no deficiencies to report as a result of our examination whether the executive board report, to the extent we can assess, has been prepared in accordance with the Guideline for annual reporting 650 ‘Fundraising Institutions’ of the Dutch Accounting Standards Board. Further, we report that the executive board report, to the extent we can assess, is consistent with the financial statements.

The Hague, May 30, 2016 KPMG Accountants N.V. H. Visser RA

Other information

129

Colophon

Edit and English revision: Grayson Morris, dutch american translation & copy Final edit: Merlijn de Klaver and Pauline Eenhoorn, Simavi Design: Rixt Reitsma, Rainbow Collection Illustrations: Valkenberg & Janssen Cover: Raymond Rutting Photography: Raymond Rutting Huib van Wersch Geert Snoeijer Raymond Rutting Prabuddha Paul Carolien Sikkenk Jerry de Mars

T. +31 (0)23 531 80 55 E. info@simavi.nl www.simavi.org