Please have your say!
Month: Nov 2012
Apples and oranges: a comparative assessment in WASH
A few weeks ago, an interesting email discussion was held on “water point mapping” D-Group of the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN). Part of the discussion focused on how much it costs to map or monitor all water systems in a country. Various figures were floating around in the discussion. But when looking at these in more detail, it was like comparing apples to oranges. Some of the costs mentioned had included the staff time of (local) government, others hadn’t, as they considered this to be a fixed cost; some referred only to a simple mapping of water points, others had done a more comprehensive collection of all kinds of data of the water points; some of the data were expressed in dollars per water point, others in local currency per person. So, no immediate sense could be made of the numbers. A former colleague once said: “an apple is…
View original post 1,100 more words
A Writeshop guide on output types and style
New resource to help those writing about WASH
WASHTech Burkina : le développement participatif d’un outil d’évaluation des technologies d’eau et d’assainissement
Add your thoughts here… (optional)
Des constats
Le secteur de l’eau et l’assainissement n’est pas à court de technologies nouvelles et émergentes, promues par le secteur privé ou les ONG et les bailleurs de fonds. Avant même d’être adoptées dans les stratégies nationales, ces technologies sont largement reprises par le secteur privé et intègrent nos villes et villages.
Conséquence : La contribution des nouvelles technologies pour l’atteinte des Objectifs du millénaire pour le développement (OMD) est insignifiante. Un des obstacles majeurs à la réalisation des objectifs du secteur apparaît être l’absence de systèmes pour évaluer le potentiel d’une technologie et le manque de capacité à mettre de nouvelles technologies appropriées à l’échelle de manière efficace. WashTech propose un outil innovant pour évaluer les technologies dans un contexte spécifique. D’une durée de 36 mois, WAHTech est un Projet de recherche sur un procédé innovant pour évaluer le potentiel et la viabilité d’un large éventail des technologies…
View original post 1,068 more words
Sustainable water services take ‘Water & Health’ Conference by storm
I was lucky enough to attend this year’s Water & Health Conference at the University of North Carolina. I was even luckier to make it as the skirts of Hurricane Sandy swept up the Atlantic coast before crashing into the American North East.
It was a great opportunity to meet, face-to-face, many RWSN members who have been communicating with online and meet a whole bunch of new people. It was really inspiring to hear their stories and find out more about their organisations and research. Here are just some of my highlights from the event:
Continue reading “Sustainable water services take ‘Water & Health’ Conference by storm”
The Stone prize: innovative approaches to sustainable water purification and supply
By Trupthi Basavaraj and Rachel Findlay,
New Philanthropy Capital
When confronted by the sheer scale of the issues facing the water sector in developing countries, it is hard not to feel a little bit powerless. Globally, 780 million people, amounting to 11% of the world’s population, use unsafe drinking water or have no water source at all, and it has become increasingly apparent that more traditional models of water delivery are not always the most viable solution. It is estimated, for example, that 40% of the pumps built in Africa are broken at any given point, and each pump can take up to a month to be repaired.
For the Stone Family Foundation, the answer is to identify and support water initiatives that harness the power of the private sector, as these have the potential to create and sustain impact. To this end, the Foundation established the £100,000 Stone Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Water, administered by NPC. After an 8 month process to create a shortlist from a pool of 179 applications across 39 countries, the Foundation recently announced its Prize winner: Dispensers for Safe Water (DSW) for its innovative Chlorine Dispenser System. The dispenser is filled with dilute chlorine and placed near a communal water source, allowing individuals to treat their water free of cost with the correct dose of chlorine.
Continue reading “The Stone prize: innovative approaches to sustainable water purification and supply”
Rural Water Supply Network - blog 