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.
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 widely debated . A key component of the clauses is to have sustainability checks as a way to... Read more...
A paper prepared for the IRC water sanitation symposium held 9-11 April 2013 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Read more...
The BRAC WASH programme has helped establish 80,000 Village WASH Committees, whose members are so engaged they're even going into politics. Read more...
Reflections by Dr Christine Sijbesma and Mahjabeen Ahmed on the QIS monitoring system. Read more...
Everywhere in the world, even the poorest families try to beautify their houses. Then why are low-cost latrines often so ugly, ask IRC's Christine Sijbesma and Erick Baetings. Read more...
Field testing is showing that mobile phones have an important role in water sanitation monitoring in Ethiopia. Read more...
A fan of the QIS system of participatory monitoring in Bangladesh came to The Hague to share her knowledge. Read more...
Anyone who works in the water sector cannot have missed the consultations and debates on the post-2015 goals for water and sanitation. Read more...
What is good about the monitoring system that we are using is that it is participatory so that respondents also get knowledge", says Senior Sector Specialist Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Mahjabeen Ahmed of the BRAC WASH II Programme. Read more...
Innovative monitoring tools are being used to provide sustainable sanitation and hygiene services to almost 55 million people in Bangladesh. Read more...
Last week's IRCnergy week looked at the exciting development of a multi-country sustainability monitoring system for water and sanitation services. Read more...
This story is fictional. Any resemblance to real situations or persons is pure coincidence. When Alice stepped through the mirroring water surface into waterland, the first creature she came across was a rabbit, wearing a UN-blue jacket, looking frantically at its watch. "It is nearly time. Only... Read more...
A few weeks ago, an interesting email discussion was held on “water point mapping” D-Groupof the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN). Part of the discussion focused on how much it costs to map or monitor all water systems in a country. Various figures were floating around in the discussion. But when... Read more...
Driven amongst others by the mobile phone applications, more and more statistics are becoming available on the state of water services. These go well beyond the coverage data we were used to in the JMP reports (and which this year gave us some reason to be mildly optimistic). The new stats provide... Read more...
Driven amongst others by the mobile phone applications, more and more statistics are becoming available on the state of water services. These go well beyond the coverage data we were used to in the JMP reports (and which this year gave us some reason to be mildly optimistic). The new stats provide... Read more...
One of the key premises behind community-based management is that users pay for the operation and maintenance costs. On this blog we have reported at various occasions about the non-payment of major repairs. But some of the data presented this recently, show that even payment of minor O&M costs... Read more...
Last week, we had our first Triple-S research seminar, discussing the first findings from the assessments of service provision around point sources in Ghana and Uganda. Read more...
As argued several times, post-construction support is one of the keys to sustainability of rural water supplies. Read more...
Yesterday I read an excellent report on how the water sector in Uganda has managed to build a truly national monitoring system. The report is written by the Rural Water Supply Network Read more...
Aid must be used to help local institutions not just develop infrastructure but also operate and maintain water and sanitation services well into the future. Read more...