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Published on: 20/10/2014

In a couple of days he leaves The Hague again: this time to visit a project of a partner organisation in Kenya. After running IRC’s Asia regional programme, living in Uganda, and working on projects in Africa including Sierra Leone and Kenya, Van Lieshout still is not tired of travelling.  “I came to Kenya for the first time in 2006 for IRC. What I like most about this job is seeing abstract concepts like IRC’s life-cycle costs approach and services that last make changes, albeit small, on the ground, in real life.”

On this time’s trip for IRCconsult, René leads a team of Kenyan consultants with whom he supports ten Kenyan counties to develop a strategic five year plan for water and urban sanitation. Van Lieshout: “The partner organisation that works there wants to make these strategies more focused on equity, sustainability and involvement of the private sector. My role will be to bring global IRC knowledge into practice on the ground.”

There is a big difference between theoretical concepts and the ground reality, and bridging those two is what he does best. “The people who are really responsible for service delivery are the county governments, so you have to work with them.” But that’s easier said than done.

What I like about this job is seeing concepts make changes on the ground, in real life. 

Van Lieshout: “To understand the way water services are organised, you first have to understand the relatively young counties and the general struggle of the water sector after consecutive and not yet completed reforms in 2002 and 2010 – resulting in three different governance systems running parallel to each other. In this often confusing and difficult to work reality, it is vital to work with Kenyan consultants who know their way around in the local politics.

With his 33 years of experience in the field, Van Lieshout is a generalist and works in different contexts - from developing urban water infrastructure to action research to piloting biological wastewater treatment plants. The project he works on in Kenya will run until the end of 2014. After that Van Lieshout will do other projects for IRCconsult as well.

What he expects and what his hopes are for IRCconsult in the future? “It is mostly administrative now, but it will help in the future to sell the specific and relatively unique skills and knowledge that we have in IRC better,” he says.

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About IRCconsult

IRCconsult is a consultancy venture for clients to engage expertise for short-term contracts in a range of specialist areas in water, sanitation and hygiene. IRCconsult is a partnership between Aguaconsult and IRC - two organisations working in WASH in the international development sector, and is used to combine the networks and cutting edge sector knowledge of both organisations. IRCconsult provides research and analysis, training and capacity building, evaluation and monitoring, programme design services, as well as advocacy and technical advisory services. 

 

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