Local recruitment: Household Water and Sanitation Borrowers Survey in Philippines

Household Water and Sanitation Borrowers Survey in Philippines

July 2025

Introduction 

Water.org empowers people to take action and deliver solutions that accelerate progress and impact. Under its flagship program called WaterCredit, Water.org partners with financial institutions (FIs) to develop loan product targeted to improve water supply and sanitation (WSS) facilities for lower-income households. Water.org has been working in Philippines since 2015 to assess and tailor WSS loan products to meet the demand, piloting, and gradually scale until the product is embedded within the partners’ operations. To date, this initiative has supported over 25 local financial institutions to serve 2.3 million households with improved water and/or sanitation improvements across the country.

As part of internal monitoring processes and requirements, and for transparent reporting to our stakeholders, Water.org engages third party consultant firms to perform survey amongst our WaterCredit borrowers to ensure interventions are meeting the goals. The Consultant will administer in-person surveys to a representative sample of household WSS borrowers to assess whether the loan was used for the reported purpose, the borrowers’ experience with the loan process, and user satisfaction.

Scope of Work 

The consultant will conduct in-person interviews with 1,330 household clients who availed water and sanitation financing. Water.org uses a standard questionnaire covering various household characteristics, WSS improvements, immediate outcomes, and user satisfaction via a mobile platform called mWater.

Types of data to be collected 

Water.org has developed a survey instrument (standard questionnaire), herewith outlines the topics covered within the survey.

1. Questions regarding whether the client used the loan for its reported purpose;
2. Questions about the water and/or sanitation improvement type and functionality;
3. Questions regarding the client’s satisfaction with the loan process;
4. Questions regarding how the water and/or sanitation improvement impacted the household’s health and hygiene, sense of safety, time usage, income, and sense of self-dignity;
5. On-site observation of the water and/or sanitation improvement by the enumerators;
6. Collecting photo documentation of the household water and/or sanitation improvement;
7. Verification of the accuracy of the partner reporting (WaterCredit Loan Report) against the client data collected in the field.

Water.org will provide the survey instrument to the selected third-party firm. The survey has been translated to Tagalog and tested prior to survey administration to validate the instrument and ensure high quality data collection. The selected third-party firm must use mWater mobile platform for data collection.

Mobile Survey Platform 

Water.org is utilizing mWater mobile survey tools for data collection purposes. Utilizing mWater survey tools helps ensure quality control and will require training among the consultant team and enumerators. Water.org will provide training for the consultant on the mobile survey tool, if needed. The consultants must use this platform to conduct its independent verifications of client data and is responsible for training enumerators on the survey tool and proper administration of the survey.

The third party will be responsible for acquiring mobile devices compatible with the mWater application. The most recent list of compatible devices can be found on the mWater website here. Please note that this list is not exhaustive.

Methodological Framework and respondent selection 

The consultant is responsible for conducting a randomized selection of a minimum of 1,330 household clients to: 1) verify that they have taken out a water and/or sanitation loan, 2) verify that the loan has enabled the client to construct a functional water and/or sanitation improvement, 3) assess the construction quality and functionality of the improvement, and 4) to understand their use of and satisfaction with the improvement.

Each financial institution partner should be treated as its own population universe and must have its own sampling methodology to ensure a representative sample of the partner’s water and sanitation product borrowers.  The financial institutions should NOT be combined into single universe.  Water.org will provide client lists from each partner institution, as well as the minimum number of surveys required per partner; the third-party firm will need to review the lists and develop a representative sampling methodology. The following table lists the geographic distribution of the financial institutions, with a few partners (in *) still under confirmation.

List of partners and estimated geography distributions of the WSS loan product

The sampling methodology for each institution for household loans should take into consideration the type of loan disbursed (water vs sanitation) and geographic coverage.  Utilizing an approved sampling method, the research consultant will randomly select the respondents from client lists provided by Water.org for the identified study area(s).  Each partners’ client list is treated as its own population and as such will require its own sampling.

Consultant Responsibilities:

The Consultant will be responsible for, but not limited to, the following (also see Key Deliverables and Dates under Work Plan section below):

• Submit inception report detailing the research plan, which includes sampling methodology, plan for testing the surveys, training plan for enumerators, and data quality assurance practices.
• Select a representative sample of clients from each financial institution using sampling frameworks approved by Water.org
• Test and finalize the questionnaire (final version needs to be approved by Water.org)

• Translate or localize the survey as needed for respondent to understand during the interview
• Train enumerators in use of the mWater platform and questionnaire respectively
• Ensure enumerators obtain informed consent from the partners, client, and local authority and follow ethical data collection standards.
• Prepare basic contingency plans for fieldwork risks (e.g. weather, access issues).

• Administer the in-person household survey for each financial institution to have a representative sample of WSS borrowers
• Closely supervise enumerators to maintain data quality and adherence to protocol
• Apply quality control mechanisms to gaurantee the quality of the data collected

• Clean and validate all interview data within mWater
• Ensure a final set of clean, raw data is saved within mWater. The consultant will not hold any rights to copy, publish or otherwise use data collected for the purpose of this analysis .
• Submit a fieldwork report to capture main learnings during the data collection process per financial institution, including challenges and limitations
• Coordinate regularly with Water.org for updates and approvals.

Request for Proposals 

Through a bidding and proposal process, Water.org will select a reputable research institution to conduct the partner monitoring surveys. The consultant firm will be selected based on previous experience working with microfinance institutions and NGOs, conducting in-person survey across different provinces, and assessing development work in the water and sanitation sector.

Key dates & deliverables:

Water.org anticipates that the entire assignment will be completed no later than November 30^th, 2025. Water.org understands that activities and timelines per activity may change accordingly with the Consultant’s proposal; however an approximate expected time requirement and key activities are as follows:

Budget 

The proposed budget shall be included with the consultant’s submission, and the final budget approval shall be fixed and not subject to negotiation. A sample budget template is provided on this link. The consultant shall provide budget information in this format or in a manner that includes similar details. All amounts shall be presented in PhP. Budget notes are encouraged.

Minimum Applicant Qualifications / Skills: 

Applicants must be firms that have at a minimum the following qualifications:

1. Proposed staffing plan includes at least one native or fluent English speaker as lead writer.
2. Proposed staffing plan includes a sufficient number of qualified enumerators to collect the in- person household surveys in the partner geographies with appropriate language capacities, preferably with knowledge about water, sanitation, or financing.
3. Demonstrated experience and familiarity with the WASH and/or microfinance sector.
4. Demonstrated experience with conducting large-sized household surveys in Philippines.

Proposal Submission / Contact: 

Proposal should be submitted in English to include a narrative, timeline, budget, and the CVs of the lead evaluator and evaluation team (no more than 10 pages excluding annexes). The narrative should include description of the third-party firm’s qualifications in water, sanitation, or microfinance. Description of the preliminary sampling methodology, the enumerator staffing plans that show how the enumerators will be trained, organized and dispersed to conduct the interviews as well as the protocol for data quality control and supervision. Please submit proposals no later than July 30^th with email subject “WaterCredit Household Borrowers Survey”:

Kiki Tazkiyah

SEA Insights Lead

ktazkiyah@water.org

Rafael Castillo

Senior Impact Integrity Specialist

rcastillomanrique@water.org