IRC at WASH Conference 2011 in Brisbane

Published on: 10/06/2011

Some 224 conference delegates from over 100 organisations in 40 countries participated in the WASH Conference 2011 in Brisbane, Australia. The common theme was sustainability. The conference was unique in that four areas of sustainability had equal weight in the programme: institutional, environmental and technical, social and behavioural, financial sustainability. IRC staff members gave a total of six key note speeches in three of the four streams and led three workshops.

1. For IRC Christine Sijbesma gave two key note presentations in the behavourial stream on Planning Behaviour Change: Chances and Challenges and on Quantative Monitoring and Qualitative Data: empowering communities and informing programmes. With 65 participants, only 7 more women than men, the day's session had a maximum level of attendance.
2. Catarina Fonseca's key note was part of the financial stream and was titled Shifting to life-cycle costing.
3. In the institutional theme Harold Lockwood of Aguaconsult - IRC presented findings of the Triple-S project in Decentralisation of Rural Water: moving towards a solution or outsourcing the problem?.

The three workshops were on Sustainable Service Delivery, Costing of Sustainable Services and Monitoring. The workshop on monitoring was joint effort by SNV-Asia and IRC.

• The training on Sustainable Service Delivery was attended by 35 participants. They were presented with methodologies and conceptual materials on sustainable service delivery approaches.
• It was the first time that the training on the ten steps for the Costing of Sustainable Services was given to a whole new audience. Attendance went beyond planned (45 people) and exercises and examples worked well for a full day and a very enthusiastic and interested audience.
• The SNV/IRC workshop on performance monitoring had 51 participants and a good gender balance. The training was participatory and participants were able to do hands-on work on indicators of their own choice: handwashing devices, handwashing practices, toilet hygiene and infant excreta disposal.

More information on the conference and all the presentations can be found on the conference website.