Opinions and voices for change
Navigate the blogs from our experts, water, sanitation and hygiene sector colleagues and guests. Narrow down your search by using the filters.
As we approach near universal water supply coverage, India is facing the twin challenges of achieving last mile coverage and simultaneously addressing sustainability of the massive assets already created. Read more...
This blog, written in the context of Burkina Faso, sets out how the lack of integrated approaches to WASH is one of the limiting factors in achieving universal access to WASH services. National policy makers and donor agencies insufficiently take the one-package WASH advantages into account, with... Read more...
During the last WEDC conference in Hanoi, IRC and Aguaconsult organised a side event to discuss how different service delivery models are combined to provide universal and better access to rural water. Read more...
IRC is developing a methodology to measure behaviour change in the context of a sanitation programme promoting EcoSan latrines. Read more...
Over the years, IRC's focus has evolved from supporting community management, to working on a 'whole system' approach to sector change. In this second blog in our series on a learning and adaptive sector we chart IRC's evolution and explore the central role of collective learning for delivering... Read more...
Priceless! tells the story of the five year WASHCost project to disentangle the costs of water, sanitation and hygiene. The project has influenced international discourse about WASH services and how costs relate to quality and sustainability, and has spun off assets such as the WASHCost Share tool... Read more...
Is aid and trade the answer to "Dead Aid"? Is it just tied aid in disguise? Does it make sense in the water sanitation and hygiene sector? IRC invited a group of stakeholders from the Dutch WASH sector to The Hague on 17 September 2014 to discuss all this and more. Join the discussion! Read more...
IRC updated its ladder to measure effectiveness of hygiene interventions, which is breaking down hygiene practices according to categories, and that can be used to compare the "before" and "after" behaviour of a beneficiary, for a given intervention. Read more...
A passionate school teacher took the lead in making his school a model in sanitation. However, the ground in front of the school is an open defecation area. Read more...
This second post - in a series of articles on water resources management by Charles Batchelor and John Butterworth - looks at water services from a water resource management (WRM) perspective. In the first article we discussed IWRM and the 'i' for integration in water resources management. Read more...
"We can see that what was happening six or seven thousand years ago is still affecting what is happening in the subsurface from a salinity point of view. If you want to know what is happening now, you have to go back in time and try to understand how the groundwater system works," says Oude Essink Read more...
IRC développe une méthodologie permettant de mesurer les changements de comportements dans le cadre d’un programme d’assainissement mettant en œuvre des latrines EcoSan. Read more...
IRC a mis à jour son échelle de mesure d'efficacité des interventions d'hygiène, qui décompose les pratiques d'hygiène en catégories permettant de situer les comportements d'un bénéficiaire entre un "avant" et un "après" une intervention. Read more...
What about looking deep into on-going WASH programmes and analysing their strengths and weaknesses? What about designing innovative ways of measuring the effectiveness of these approaches? And what about testing adjustments to their activities to make the interventions even more effective? Read more...
In many parts of the world it is not done to ask questions about someone’s loo or toilet. It is not discussed among neighbours or friends. Usually that is the case in places where sanitation works perfectly and is not considered anything special. Read more...
Sierra Leone's Ministry of Water Resources and Ministry of Health and Sanitation have spearheaded learning and better coordination in the sector to achieve national water and sanitation targets.Translating high-level commitment into daily practice takes determination, time and skills. Read more...
Understanding the difference between charity, venture philanthropy and impact investing is key to getting businesses and programmes funded Read more...
In this blog Patrick Moriarty reflects on Stockholm World Water Week 2014. There is good progress in language (and some tools) around the role of government in delivering services, he argues. But it's still an uphill struggle on who pays for what. Read more...
Wil je geen geëmmer met de bucket challenge , doneer dan aan de overheid! Read more...
This second blogpost of three on urban sanitation in Indonesia describes the mismatch between policy and practice. Politicians have set the ambitious target to make Indonesia open defecation free by 2019, but a recent visit to Indonesian municipalities makes me wonder whether striving for the end... Read more...