| Abstract | Structural rehabilitation and infrastructure refurbishment after natural or man-made disasters, or in support of countries / regions to reach higher levels of development are some of the main elements of humanitarian aid and development interventions. Driven by objectives to “build back better” and to sustainably improve well-being, livelihood options and resilience capacity of affected and vulnerable populations, such interventions require high involvement of all stakeholders concerned during needs assessments, project design / development and implementation of activities. Besides structural soundness, durability, suitability for use and further improvement of structures provided also depends on beneficiaries’ willingness and capacity for adequate maintenance, which again is determined by perception and acceptance of genuine ownership. There are plenty of examples of suitable, context-adequate and well implemented projects which clearly enable populations to substantially improve living environment and living conditions, thus not only to dispose of more and better “assets”, but also through improved basic infrastructure, develop higher levels of resilience and community cohesion. However, a number of interventions, for several reasons, do not yield expected results. Hence they lack evidence of beneficiary ownership, and in most cases, as a consequence demonstrate absence of adequate maintenance. This individual course paper intends to describe inception, implementation and impact of (infra) structural humanitarian aid/development projects in relation to social marketing aspects on the example of water and sanitation facilities in South Sudan. Practical examples will serve to illustrate correlation to components of “Social Marketing”, and demonstrate relevance of these components. This paper intends to • Illustrate social marketing concepts through examples of water- and sanitation assets and infrastructure in the humanitarian assistance/development aid context in South Sudan, • Explore to which extent social marketing influences impact and sustainability of assets and infrastructure in humanitarian assistance/development aid contexts, • Identify factors, other than social marketing - concept induced ones, impacting efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of assets and infrastructure provided through in humanitarian/development assistance, • Explore replicability of social marketing approaches in different humanitarian assistance/development contexts. |