Category: Sustainable Services

Flying the flag – but breaking the pump?

A thoughtful post on whether flag waving by donors undermines their own cause as well as causing confusion over ownership of WASH assets

Stef Smits's avatarwater services that last

One of the topics of discussion during this week’s Triple-S annual meeting was around harmonization of approaches to rural water supply between donors and governments. Presenting the experiences in Ghana, Vida Duti presented this nice map, showing which donors operate in which part of the country. One could interpret this map in a positive way; probably donors have come to some division of labour, all working in different parts of the country – even though some areas are quite crowded with donors, and this is even excluding NGOs. However, the real problem lies not so much in the presence of so many donors; but ensuring that they all follow the same – or at least similar – approaches, that align well with the ones developed by the government.

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Source: IRC Ghana 

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A bit short of a miracle …

The “Everyone Forever” is gaining traction

editor's avatarwater services that last

By Patrick Moriarty and John Sauer

What is it that IADB’s Max Valasquez Matute in Honduras finds ‘only a bit short of a miracle’?  The decision by seven INGOs to align their programming in Honduras in support of an Everyone Forever movement aimed at delivering full coverage in sustainable rural water, sanitation and hygiene services.

Whether there was divine intervention or not, the meeting we attended on the 24 May between the assembled board members of the Millennium Water Alliance and the Mesa de Cooperantes (the donor coordination platform) of the Honduran WASH sector was pretty unusual – and very exciting.

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Planning for impact

A very useful update on the Triple-S project

editor's avatarwater services that last

By Patrick Moriarty

Back in June and July of 2012, Triple-S underwent a mid-term assessment (MTA) by an excellent team led by Dr. Ben Ramalingam. The MTA was a hugely useful exercise, allowing the Triple-S team and our partners to take some time out from our day to day work to reflect on how we were doing. The MTA team held up a mirror to us as a project and process – in much the same way that Triple-S seeks to hold up a mirror to the rural water sector – allowing us to have a long hard look at ourselves.

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Islands of success

Evaluation of a Water For People intervention in partnership with local government India

Stef Smits's avatarwater services that last

Sagar is an island at the mouth of the river Ganges where it meets the Bay of Bengal. Every year in January, about half a million pilgrims visit the island to worship at the holy Ganges. The hundreds of mobile toilet units standing on the empty festival terrain during the rest of the year are witness to the island’s authority’s efforts to ensure that the pilgrim’s stay on the island is as comfortable, hygienic and safe as possible. But the authorities also don’t forget about the 200.000 permanent inhabitants when it comes to sanitation. Together with the NGO Water For People (WFP) and other partners, it seeks to achieve full coverage in sanitation and water supply in the next few years.

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Sustainability Tools and Clauses

Thoughts on the Sustainability Clauses, by Jonathan Annis

editor's avatarWater, sanitation and hygiene service monitoring

By Jonathan Annis

Maintaining sustainability (or longevity as I prefer to think of it) of water services requires an ecosystem of support. This ecosystem includes but is not limited to policy, financing, planning, learning, harmonization, and technology. The ecosystem is complex and nonlinear; the broad categories are highly interdependent and failure in one aspect can have a domino effect on the others.  Indeed, services are delivered, like children are raised, with the support of an entire village.

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Sustainability checks, clauses and compacts – USAID and DGIS lead the way

Blog by Stef Smits of IRC on ways that funders can improve sustainability of WASH projects

editor's avatarwater services that last

By Stef Smits

Over the past year, there has been quite a bit of buzz in the WASH sector on the sustainability clause  that DGIS seeks to include in its contacts with implementers. The pros and cons of this have been widelydebated . A key component of the clauses is to have sustainability checks as a way to verify whether sustainability criteria are being met. One of the sessions at the “Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium” focused on this kind of approaches, looking back at past experience and at the future outlook for them. Particular emphasis was given to the experiences of two bilateral donors who have been leading the way in this: USAID and DGIS, as well as their partners.

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A visit to Gammarth, Tunisia, or what I learnt at the African Development Bank’s retreat for rural water and sanitation

Thoughts on the RWSSI meeting at the African Development Bank in Tunisia

editor's avatarwater services that last

By Harold Lockwood

Last week in Gammarth, Tunis the African Development Bank called a meeting, attended by about 160 sector experts and other government officials, to launch a new coordination mechanism for its flagship Rural Water Supply and  Sanitation Initiative, or RWSSI. It was an interesting couple of days and through the various presentations, discussions, working groups and questions from the floor, a number of both key opportunities and challenges – fault lines even – were exposed to me as a relatively neutral participant.

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