Consultation period on the RWSN Strategy now open – Période de consultation sur la stratégie RWSN maintenant ouverte

The draft RWSN Strategy 2018-2023 can be downloaded here for consultation, and you can also view a short presentation about it here; please leave a comment below or email us, telling us:

  • What you like about the strategy
  • What could be improved
  • If you, or your organisation, could contribute staff time, funding or knowledge to strengthen any of the topics or themes

The consultation on the RWSN Strategy is open to all for 6 weeks  (until 22 December 2017)

Watch the webinar on the RWSN strategy

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La stratégie RWSN 2018-2023 peut être téléchargée ici (en anglais)  pour consultation, ou vous pouvez également télécharger une présentation à ce sujet en français ici; n’hésitez pas à laisser un commentaire ci-dessous ou nous envoyer un email, en nous disant:

  • Ce que vous aimez dans cette stratégie
  • Ce qui pourrait être amélioré
  • Si vous, ou votre organisation, pouvez contribuer du temps, des financements ou des connaissances pour renforcer les sujets ou les thèmes

La consultation sur la stratégie RWSN est ouverte à tous pour 6 semaines (jusqu’au 22 décembre 2017)

Regarder le webinaire sur la stratégie RWSN

Gender and rural water services – lessons from RWSN members

Gender relations are critical to nearly every aspect of rural water supply, but rarely addressed in practice by rural water professionals. All water supply programmes affect men and women in different ways, and while practitioners assume their work will benefit women, how do they know whether it will or not, how do they know what impact it will have?

In 2016 RWSN’s Mapping and Monitoring Theme members had an impromptu and rich e-discussion on gender equality and WASH. In early 2017, RWSN’s Equality, Non Discrimination and Inclusion (ENDI) Theme launched a call to their members for examples of inspiring experiences of ‘Making Water Work for Women’. Both discussions have been rich with experiences from across Asia, Africa and Latin America, and reinforcing of each other. We have put together a short brief highlighting the key points from these discussions:

  • The nature of female participation within water committees should be discussed in terms of quality as well as quantity.  If women’s roles do not offer any opportunity to influence committee decisions and outcomes, their participation is largely tokenistic. Qualitative indicators can help to show whether women’s participation is tokenistic, or active and meaningful.
  • High-level government commitment to minimum quotas for women’s participation was seen as a crucial prerequisite to creating the space for the inclusion of women and the ability to demand it.
  • Where women were more influential on Water User Committees, it was strongly attributed to the special efforts of implementing organisations who worked on mobilising women and increasing their confidence and awareness about  the work involved, and sensitising men equally to create space for women’s involvement in the committees, as the example in India shows.
  • By working closely with women and men together it is possible to challenge gender norms amongst women and men in rural communities, so that they begin to share unpaid work associated with WASH more equally, as the example in Ethiopia shows.
  • Identifying the agents of change (women and men) from the community who are motivated and determined to advocate for water and sanitation can nurture lifelong advocates, as illustrated by the experience from Bangladesh.
  • Disaggregating monitoring indices by gender can help to raise gender equality as a priority, and set specific expectations about the participation of women in different aspects of service provision.
  • Conflict-sensitive approaches to water and sanitation can help to facilitate peace building by creating a platform for women around a common need, as in the example from India.

Download the brief : Gender and rural water services – lessons and experience from RWSN members

The 2017 RWSN Evaluation is now out!

Back in June 2017, we announced that RWSN would be undergoing an external evaluation, which was undertaken by PEMconsult over July and August 2017.

What were the main findings from the Evaluation?  Overall, the evaluation found that “RWSN is highly relevant for the rural water sector, in comparison to other networks, and for the benefits it provides to its members and organizational partners…. The RWSN is a highly competent, advanced community-building network which connects people who would likely not have been connected before and disseminates valuable knowledge to its members, which can be applied to practice.”

While the report is overall positive, it makes 12 recommendations around (1) RWSN’s strategy (2) RWSN’s governance structure and (3) the way the network operates.  RWSN’s Executive Steering Committee has responded to these recommendations, which will be addressed in the coming years and in its new Strategy. We will discuss these at an upcoming webinar on November 9th, for which you can register here.

Download:

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En juin dernier, nous avons annoncé que RWSN ferait l’objet d’une évaluation externe, réalisée par PEMconsult en juillet-août 2017.

Quels sont les résultats principaux de l’évaluation?  L’équipe de l’évaluation a conclu que “RWSN est très pertinent pour le secteur de l’eau rurale, par rapport à d’autres réseaux, et offre des avantages à ses membres et à ses partenaires organisationnels …. Le RWSN est un réseau très compétent et avancé, qui permet de former des communautés qui connecte les personnes qui ne pourraient pas autrement être connectées et dissémine des connaissances ayant de la valeur pour ses membres, et qui peuvent être mises en pratique.”

Bien que le rapport soit positif, il y a 12 recommandations portant sur  (1) la stratégie de RWSN (2) la structure de gouvernance de RWSN et (3) la façon dont le réseau fonctionne.  Le comité de pilotage de RWSN a répondu à ces recommandations qui seront considérées dans les années à venir et dans sa nouvelle stratégie. Nous allons en parler lors d’un wébinaire le 9 novembre, pour lequel vous pouvez vous inscrire ici.

Télécharger le résumé exécutif du rapport d’évaluation (français).

 

 

Declining groundwater levels in Malawi impacting rural water supplies

RWSN member, Muthi Nhlema, has challenged the government of Malawi over how groundwater is used for rural water supplies: 30% of water points are not working across the country and he points to declining groundwater levels being a major factor. Mr Nhlema therefore challenged the wisdom of further drilling and groundwater development, if the use of the water resource is unsustainable.

Read the full article: The Nation, 1 October 2017

RWSN’s Kerstin Danert wins top award

Dr Kerstin Danert, Skat Foundation, who is a member of the UPGro Knowledge Broker team and Chairs UPGro’s Programme Coordination Group (PCG) has been given the “Distinguished Associate Award, 2017” by the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) for her outstanding contribution improving the use of groundwater worldwide.

Kerstin has been a driving force behind the Rural Water Supply Network, and in particular the promotion of drilling professionalisation and documentation of manual drilling practices. In addition to working on UPGro, she is currently leading an RWSN collaboration between UNICEF and Skat Foundation on professionalising water well drilling in Africa, which includes capacity development activities in Angola, Burkina Faso and Zambia.

RWSN mini webinar series 2017 (ENG) / Mini-série de webinaires RWSN 2017(FR) / Mini-serie de webinarios RWSN (SP)

Webinar recordings and presentations now available below for download!

English:

  • Thursday 9th November, 2017: Making RWSN work for rural water professionals: results from the RWSN evaluation and new strategy 2018-2023 [ENG, 2.30 pm CET/ 1.30 pm GMT/ 8.30 am EDT]
  • Tuesday, 14th November, 2017: “Grown up” finance for rural water? [ENG, 2.30 pm CET/ 1.30 pm GMT/ 8.30 am EDT]
  • Thursday, 16th November, 2017: A Dollar per year keeps rural water services here? The costs of direct support. [ENG, 2.30 pm CET/ 1.30 pm GMT/ 8.30 am EDT]

Français:

  • Jeudi 9 novembre 2017: faire fonctionner RWSN pour les professionnels du secteur de l’eau rurale: résultats de l’évaluation RWSN et de la nouvelle stratégie 2018-2023 [FR, 11h00 CET/ 10h00 GMT]
  • Mardi 14 novembre 2017: De la finance “comme les grands” pour l’eau rurale? [FR, 11h00 CET/ 10h00 GMT]

Español

  • Martes, 14 de noviembre 2017: Cuánto cuesta el apoyo directo a los servicios rurales de agua? [ESP, 16h30 CET/ 10h30 EDT]

Continue reading “RWSN mini webinar series 2017 (ENG) / Mini-série de webinaires RWSN 2017(FR) / Mini-serie de webinarios RWSN (SP)”

Getting groundwater off the ground

How do we  raise capacity for borehole drilling and its management globally? If everyone is to have access to safe and affordable drinking water by 2030, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, detailed attention is required for the siting, drilling and installation of boreholes in every single project in every country. Alas, this is not always the case. The result is that many boreholes fail within a very short time.

RWSN members are telling us that they want more in-country training.  The article linked below provides some suggestions. Do you have ideas or incentives for government and private enterprises invest in skill development in the groundwater sector, and in the rural water sector at large?

To find out more:

http://www.geodrillinginternational.com/geodrilling/issue/1179329/getting-groundwater-ground

TrainingdrillingsupervisorsinSierraLeonein2014-860x560

Still barking up the wrong tree? What is the future of community-managed rural water supplies: Join a live webcast from the Water & Health Conference at UNC

Save the date: Tuesday 17 October 2017

  • 07:30 to 08:30 (US Eastern Standard Time) /
  • 13:30-14:30 (Central European Time) /
  • 17:00-18:00 (India Standard Time)

What has happened so far?

The issue of community management of rural water supplies has attracted some interesting debate recently. An RWSN blog post by Ellie Chowns, at that time a researcher at the University of Birmingham, prompted a lively discussion in the RWSN online Sustainable Services and Equality, Non-Discrimination & Inclusion communities.

In parallel to this The Water Institute at UNC, in consultation with RWSN, chose a recent paper by Ellie Chowns as the publication to review for the most recent WaSH Policy Research Digest. This was accompanied by a short literature review written by Harold Lockwood of Aguaconsult, based on work he was doing for the World Bank on a multi-country review of rural water service sustainability.

How you can get involved

The Water & Health Conference at the University of North Carolina is an excellent opportunity to continue this conversation and bring it to an even larger audience. UNC and RWSN will host a one-hour panel discussion and will live stream this as a webcast so that a number of people not attending the conference can take part. Short moderated interventions from panelists will be followed by questions from the audience received both in person and online.  The panel discussion will be designed to bring out diverse points of view (for instance, community management has not worked and should be abandoned vs. that it is still a viable model) but also to explore the nuances of the circumstances under which well-supported community management can be successful.

The panel discussion will also be recorded and made available on the RWSN and The Water Institute at UNC websites.

You can start right away by posting questions to the Sustainable Services community – just send them in an email to ManagementSupport_rwsn@dgroups.org

Unfortunately, the webcast will only be available in English, but questions in other languages can be accepted, if submitted beforehand for translation. Be aware that there will be limited time and a lot of interest so it unlikely that everything can be covered.

Format

Panel:

  • Harold Lockwood, Director, Aguaconsult UK
  • Ellie Chowns, Evaluation and Research Specialist, VSO
  • Eng. Aaron Kabrizi, Director, Ministry of Water and Environment, Uganda
  • Vida Duti, Country Director, IRC Ghana

Moderator: Clarissa Brocklehurst, Adjunct Professor, Water Institute, UNC

Online host: David Fuente, Assistant Professor, School of Earth, Ocean & Environment, University of South Carolina

US: +16465588656,,204142462#  or +16699006833,,204142462#

  • Or Telephone：

Dial (for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):

US: +1 646 558 8656 or +1 669 900 6833

Webinar ID: 204 142 462

International numbers available: https://uncsph.zoom.us/zoomconference?m=87U9Ga7fnXMIha5ZeJDhjyNMar78REQd