Originally Posted by M17SST

I was recently told this anecdote by someone senior working in a government in Africa (I was delivering a session on cognitive biases as a bit of context).

He told us of a village in his home country that was visited by some consultants. Now this village (fairly rural) didn’t have great access to water. The consultants observed that children were walking up to 2 hours round trip to fetch water for the family.

The obvious solution they surmised - this village needed more access to wells etc. They wrote up their findings. Submitted it to government. And commenced a lengthy project to instal central water access. Once done they patted themselves on the back for a job well done and waited for the positive feedback to roll in.

Only, it didn’t. In fact, many households weren’t happy about the changes at all.

Baffled, they had to engage in some follow up research. It transpired that for many parents in the households - that 2 hours was the only private time they had…

A lovely, true, example of how we can make so many assumptions and not understand human behaviour.

The last couple of surveys have definitely brought that anecdote to mind.