Learning to change in the sanitation sub-sector?

Published on: 31/08/2011

During that session, the project SaniFaso (introduced previously on the Francophone blog Fas'Eau Nouvelles launched in March this year) was presented via a special video (see below)

This short video points at a number of interesting points regarding processes of change through learning:

• The necessity to encourage structured learning by e.g. developing a cooperation framework that really frames the initiatives and activities geared at learning;
• The importance of sharing similar values, to form a basis of trust among the four partner institutions;
• The recognised importance of working together to achieve more impact and understand issues from a wider angle;
• The crucial link with internal knowledge sharing processes (within the partner organisations) to support the cooperation between them;
• The unavoidable importance of individuals in stimulating exchanges within the project but also as bringing influences and insights from other initiatives and experiences to this cooperation;
• The necessity to document processes properly to have information to get back to and prepare...
• ...capitalisation - the mobilisation of knowledge and know-how and their documentation for the sake of encouraging learning by other parties;
• And to ensure change happens, the natural link with national policy-making processes. What is particularly remarkable here is the interesting quote by Juste Nansi that national frameworks can be used as opportunities to stimulate cooperation even though that was not the primary intention behind.

As Christian Mouloki from Helvetas concludes the video, the real stakes though - for Burkina Faso but not exclusively - is for sustainable sanitation services to reach a much wider scale, that is all other communes that are unfortunately not part of the project scope. That is why there is so much emphasis on stimulating learning at the scale of a sector - beyond intentions, the lessons are yet to be harvested now... (By Ewen)