IRC works with associates, international sector specialists who will provide expertise and support for our projects on a flexible basis.
The business case for sanitation in developing countries is testified by the thousands of small scale entrepreneurs springing up to tackle problems of open defecation and process faecal waste and urine. Will these businesses be profitable and sustainable? Read more...
WASHCost has been a bold, global attempt to gain accurate knowledge on disaggregated water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) costs in rural and peri-urban areas. This independent End-of-Project assessment, commissioned by IRC, reflects on the lessons learnt from the project. Read more...
Programme managers and funders want to know the costs for the provision of WASH in schools and how to fund the desired outcomes over at least a 10 year period. Read more...
In Ouagadougou, the WASHCost team found an example of how the water sector could be organized, by looking at existing initiatives using the life-cycle cost approach. Read more...
A short film showing how WASHCost Mozambique calculated the costs of building a traditional latrine. Read more...
In India, 4 billion dollars are annually invested in the rural drinking water sector. Hand pumps, pipes and overhead systems are supplied. But in many villages, sufficient clean drinking water is still far from being an every day reality. Read more...
Robert Otim, former Triple-S district learning facilitator in Uganda, discusses the capacity gap in addressing sustainable water services
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In Uganda 10 million people lack access to safe water. The Commissioner for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation says devolving water services closer to people and taking steps to improve functionality will achieve better services. Interview and recording by Peter McIntyre, Kabarole District, May 2013.
Read more...Judging by the number of posts on Twitter, evidence for decision making seems to be a hot topic at the moment not only in the WASH sector but more broadly in the development realm. Read more...
This keynote paper situates ICT WASH innovations in the wider context of ICT and development. Read more...
The vision for WASH in the post-2015 development agenda is one of universal access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in our time. No one should practice open defecation. Everyone should have safe water, sanitation and hygiene at home. All schools and health centres should have water,... Read more...
A Dutch-funded project aims to bring piped drinking water to peri-urban neighbourhoods of the Bolivian capital La Paz. What will determine its success? 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...
On 15 May 2012, Catarina Fonseca presented the life-cycle costs approach as the seventh installment of the World Bank and Rural Water Supply Network’s webinar series on rural water supply. World Bank Rural Water Supply webinar series Read more...
The Dutch WASH Alliance (DWA) works towards a society in which everybody has access to sustainable water and sanitation. DWA acknowledges that sustainable WASH has at least five dimensions: financial, institutional, environmental, technical and a social (FIETS) dimension, which are adopted in DWA... Read more...
Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) will soon launch a new initiative to help off-track countries meet their WASH goals. 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...
Why do families build toilets? If the family tradition for many generations has been to defecate in the open – using local woods or accepted sites, then what is the incentive to make a break and opt for a toilet instead? Read more...
It costs a lot of money to provide low quality water and sanitation services – more expensive technology does not always raise standards. Research in four countries has found that switching from boreholes to small piped services can triple the costs but often leaves people with the same sub-... Read more...
The WASHCost approach is to work with locally based learning alliances to gather and share research. Read more...