This Master’s dissertation addresses the research question: To what extent can the systems concept ‘extended dynamic sustainability’ be used to explain why some results of a donor-funded education development intervention were sustained ten years after its conclusion?
To address that question, the researcher identified a specific case to explore with systems thinking: an ex-post evaluation conducted in 2016, and commissioned by an international donor, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). That ex-post evaluation confirmed that an education development intervention, the Kimberly Thusanang Programme (KTP) implemented between 1998 and 2006, resulted in sustained outcomes, which were directly linked to the KTP’s goal of improving school governance in the Francis Baard education district the Northern Cape.
The Master’s research builds on the ex-post evaluation’s analysis. Using qualitative data analysis, the researcher identified the types of sustainability found in the ex-post evaluation data set. Then, by applying Stockmann’s (1993a) ‘extended dynamic sustainability’ concept, the Master’s research found that the KTP intervention and some of its benefits were dynamically sustained through the general causal sustainability mechanisms of problem-solving, modelling and multiplication.
These findings are likely useful to research intervention sustainability, to design sustainable development interventions, and to evaluate intervention success. Further exploration of these general sustainability mechanisms needs to be conducted to determine if these mechanisms are generalisable to other development interventions and their sustained outcomes.
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