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.
Managing and sustaining change in a complex and unpredictable environment requires very different approaches and tools to those required to produce deliverables that can be well-defined in advance. Read more...
Top item on an overloaded agenda at the moment is the upcoming mid-term assessment of our Triple-S (link) project. As we prepare a terms of reference for the exercise we’ve been engaging with a number of external thinkers to help us create something that can meet the dual objectives of judging... Read more...
A summary of some recent discussions within IRC about self supply as an approach to rural water supply, based around 8 arguments. Read more...
Change at sector level, requires change by constellations of individuals and institutions. Learning alliances are an approach to change that brings together representatives from government, civil society, research institutions and the private sector to do joint research, find solutions and take... Read more...
For aid-dependent sectors like the WASH sector, aid effectiveness poses great opportunities to ensure more effective use of all available resources in the sector towards universal and sustainable WASH services. Read more...
Over the last year and a half we have been doing a lot of work with various international donors and other development partners like NGOs who support investments in rural water in developing countries. Read more...
The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector is facing serious challenges: 2 billion people are without sanitation and 800 million lack water services. And when services are provided, most are unreliable, of poor quality and prone to failure. In South Asia alone, 570,000 children die every year... Read more...
Highlights from address by the Ethiopian State Minister H.E. Ato Kebede Gerba at the opening of the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) Forum on 29 November 2011 in Kampala, Rural Water Supply in the 21st Century: Myths of the Past, Visions for the Future. Read more...
The relationship between multiple use of water and sustainability in service provision is still a thorny issue. Read more...
A question from the floor at a Rockefeller Foundation meeting raised some interesting thoughts about MUS vs MDGs. Read more...
For many decades development aid of western donors has been pretty well shielded from probing questions by the public opinion and politicians. Read more...
This mapping exercise has confirmed that, despite difficulties and statistical constraints, it is feasible to disaggregate the ODA to the water sector from European Union donors into the three component subsectors sanitation & hygiene, water supply and IWRM. And to map aid these flows... Read more...
It is the end/start of the year (depending on the moment at which you read this), so time to look at where one stands. The Joint Monitoring Programme of the United Nations has also done that for the state of the nations of the World with respect to drinking water supplies with this* publication... Read more...
I have argued at times for the need for post-construction support to rural water supply, and so have various publications from IRC and others over the past decade. However, there has been critique to this, stating that there is little evidence that shows that such help helps improving rural water... Read more...
Recently for a number of professional and personal reasons I decided to revisit an old intellectual ‘love’: Appreciative Inquiry ( AI) In the past I experimented with this method in developing a somewhat static knowledge center into a proactive learning and facilitation center, and I remember well... Read more...
Documenting change is a vitally important activity for learning from and improving upon the work carried out in development initiatives. Read more...
Could lack of definition be undermining the impact of effective but costly support? Read more...
One of the pillars of the new Dutch development policy is to promote private sector involvement as a motor for economic growth. Read more...
Change is not linear. Change is not easy. Changing the way research is carried out for more impact is certainly no exception. In session B8 of the Third International Forum for Water and Food, dedicated to innovation platforms, the tone was set: if we want to achieve impact, we have to change... Read more...
In April we interviewed Solomon, Abu, Rabin, Melina and Valerie: five young and bright individuals working together with IRC in supporting 'sector learning' in the WASH sector in their respective countries (Uganda, Ghana, Nepal, Honduras and Burkina Faso). It turns out that ‘making sector learning... Read more...