Project Quarterly Report: April–June 2021

The CKM II team is led by EnCompass LLC, with the Institute for Development Impact (I4DI) and FHI360 as subcontractors. Within the first quarter of project implementation, the CKM II team submitted required contractual deliverables on time for review and approval and onboarded most core members of the team and partners. The team reviewed existing documentation and processes from the previous project and transitioned accounts, including GlobalWaters.org, USAID Global Waters' Flickr account, and Mailchimp subscriber lists. The CKM II team relaunched weekly management and editorial meetings with USAID and developed or modified tools and trackers to facilitate a more streamlined connection between teams. The CKM II team held visioning workshops with Center for WSSH leadership and the Washington D.C.-based extended Water Team to get inputs for the project's Year 1 work plan and identify opportunities to improve and strengthen communications and knowledge management going forward. The team also hosted introductory sessions with several partners/microsite owners to better understand their upcoming resources and events and help them think through the best ways to frame this content to reach their target audiences. To build on thinking behind the project's MEL plan and Year 1 work plan, the CKM II team decided that it must pursue a comprehensive project strategy, rather than simply a knowledge management strategy. A draft is in progress, including a theory of change. The team started on, and will continue, a "listening tour" to systematically hear from key stakeholders during the first year of the project. The listening tour will help understand stakeholder profiles and needs, identify opportunities for innovation, and inform future work plan activities. The CKM II team produced and published three new blogs, two of which were cross-posted to USAID's Links family of sites. The team drafted 11 tweets shared on @USAIDWater, including promotion for Menstrual Health Awareness Day, the Sustainable WASH Systems' (SWS) June 29 webinar, and Senator Durbin's May 26 remarks. The CKM II team began discussions for the FY20 Water and Development Report on Water and Sanitation Activities and will outline a process for data collection, writing, graphics development, production, and clearance in the next quarter. The CKM II team incorporated an "analytics moment" into weekly editorial meetings to highlight interesting trends or outliers across different platforms (website, social media, Mailchimp). The topics are adapted depending on the weekly topics, and are illustrated with visuals and graphics to clearly illuminate successes and lessons learned about audience engagement. The team also pitched new engagement opportunities and a quarterly newsletter featuring blogs and articles focused on water security and climate change to USAID, which is under review and tentatively slated for publication in October 2021.