Next week is Africa Water Week (http://africawaterweek.com/6/) , the event that happens every two years that brings Africa governments together to discuss and share experiences on all aspects of water management and WASH, and provides an interface with the latest innovation and research. If you are attending then please do join RWSN and UPGro partners, … Continue reading RWSN & UPGro at Africa Water Week: WASH Sector Learning and Joint Sector Review sessions // RWSN & UPGro à la Semaine africaine de l’eau
Self-Supply at Scale: Lessons from rural Bangladesh
by Jonathan Annis is a sanitation and innovation specialist with the USAID-funded WASHplus project (www.washplus.org). His views do not represent those of USAID or the U.S. Government. I recently traveled to southeastern Bangladesh to support WASHplus’s local implementing partner WaterAid as it begins a multi-year project in the coastal belt. The coastal belt is a … Continue reading Self-Supply at Scale: Lessons from rural Bangladesh
USAID and Rotary International adopt innovative sustainability monitoring tool
A new sustainability tool for WASH
By Harold Lockwood –
This is great news and fantastic to see USAID adopting and promoting this approach which aims to really track and better understand the underlying causes of poor sustainability in the WASH sector. Sustaining WASH services is complex and dependent not only the hardware (the pumps, latrines and pipes), but also a range of the so-called software elements, for example reliable management entities, long-term external support and monitoring, adequate financing and so on. Measuring coverage is one thing, looking at functionality is also a useful proxy, but if we really want to know where the pinch-points are and how something so seemingly simple as water flowing out of a tap can fall down, it requires a comprehensive and powerful tool.
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Location Matters: A Small Tweak Brings Clean Water Innovations to 5 Million People
by Maura O'Neill, Chief Innovation Officer and Senior Counselor to the Administrator, USAID (first appeared: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/location-matters-a-small-_b_3333535.html) From the hills of western Kenya to the coastlines of Haiti, blue bins are popping up unexpectedly across local landscapes. These unassuming plastic containers positioned near communal water sources and propped on stands built from local materials, don't exactly … Continue reading Location Matters: A Small Tweak Brings Clean Water Innovations to 5 Million People
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
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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