source bulletin 63-2011

Highlights

• “WASH services that lasts” focus in 2011• Can we close the loop by making money from

poop? Gladys Quispe thinks so• Northern Uganda: Water’s open door• Helping the people of Masaba sub-county access

water and sanitation through joining hands• Sustainable WASH services• Quotes highlighting the links in the chain for

sustainable services• Ensuring rural water services that last: Lessons

from a 13-country study• IRC Symposium challenges WASH sector to cost

and finance sustainable services

News from the WSSCC

• The road to SACOSAN IV: addressing equity and inclusion issues

• West African delegates visit Bangladesh – a great example of sharing and learning between countries

• Menstrual Hygiene Management• WSSCC to Host Global Forum on Sanitation and

Hygiene

• Confirm your WSSCC membership or join now!

News from IRC

• Switching politicians on to sustainable city water• Cities can show the way to sustainable, efficient

and equitable management of water resources • World Water Day 2011: Waste water is a liquid

asset• IRC to help African communities and schools

boost community-led sanitation

“WASH services that last” focus in 2011How can WASH services be built to last? This critical question for sustainable services will be given a special focus in the four Source feature issues planned for 2011. In each issue we will publish stories that will be tagged as “WASH services that last”.

In this issue of Source Bulletin, three articles highlight outputs and lessons from the two major programmes WASHCost and Triple-S that are funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:• Quotes highlighting the links in the

chain for sustainable services, a field story from Ghana. Nick Dickinson spent two months recently in Ghana assisting the process documentation work of IRC and WASHCost teams there and he worked with photographer Peter DiCampo on a photo story to highlight the governance issues involved in securing water services (Page 5).

• Ensuring rural water services that last: lessons from a 13-country study, by Sarah Garriger, who highlights lessons from a recently completed a 13-country study to identify factors that contribute to, or constrain, the delivery of sustainable rural water services at scale. Sarah is providing communication support to the Triple-S project (Page 8).

• The need to pull together key data and methodology and sell it to decision makers in donor organisations and government was one of the central messages to emerge from the IRC Symposium, Pumps, Pipes and Promises in November 2010. A round-up report from Peter McIntyre highlights the high cost of failed services and the way in which households have to pick up the pieces themselves (Page 9).

Cover the costs of maintenance and replacement

The Triple-S study found a critical lack of life-cycle costing for capital investment, minor and major repairs, direct and indirect support costs and the costs of capital for asset replacement. Even in the USA, rural water service providers must tap soft loans and grants to cover major repairs and replacements.

While three quarters of the total cost of meeting the MDG water and sanitation target is needed for maintaining and replacing existing structures, only 13% of current funding for water and sanitation from eight major donor agencies is in fact earmarked for this.

Dick de Jong

w w w . s o u r c e . i r c . n l /

I n c o o p e r a t i o n w i t h

Source Bulletin No. 63 - March 2011

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The Source team

Can we close the loop by making money from poop? Gladys Quispe thinks so

I wipe the dust from my eyes for what feels like the hundredth time, resist the urge to scratch the nagging bites around my ankles, and lean in closer to hear what Gladys Quispe has to say, as the squeaking pigs and clucking chickens compete with the feisty Bolivian woman. We have found the only shade in her patio underneath a banana grove on this unusually hot morning. Gladys doesn’t know it, but she’s famous. Word that a woman had organised other women in her barrio into a woman-run business had reached me and I was eager to meet the ‘compost’ lady.

In San Pedro, Bolivia, a town of mostly migrants from other parts of Bolivia, we are here to listen, learn, and improve our sanitation programming. The town is cut off from the rest of the world for 2-4 months out of the year when the nearby River Pirai swells its banks and covers everything. Nearly all the houses are made from wood or chuchillo, a local plant that reminds me of super-sized sugar cane. Men spend all day-or week-in their fields tending to rice, soy, and sugarcane.

Few own their land, and many have lost the last two years of rice to erratic weather. Women, and more often than not, their daughters, stay at home doing all that needs to be done to get by in places where wood needs chopping before you can cook, water needs to be stored to wash clothes, and the never-ending fight against dust requires constant efforts. Mother Nature was particularly nasty this year, bringing flood levels not seen in years and hemorrhagic dengue in addition to “regular” dengue. The water level marks on the homes tell stories of past floods and the hardships that go along living in several feet of water each year.

Taking stock of Gladys’s home, I remember our basement flooding when I was a child.

We had a toilet in the basement, and surely it must have flooded too? A similar thing happens in San Pedro, but it happens every year and is not solved with a sump pump and two crabby parents. Most homes consist of three separate structures; one room where the family sleeps- from 4-12 people; a kitchen where women and girls spend most of the day preparing and cooking food over wood fires, and finally, usually in the corner of the lot-as far away as possible, but still on the family’s property-is a three-sided, un-roofed, waist-high simple pit latrine. I can see the indents from the latrines of past years; those whose contents were spread throughout the neighbourhood with the yearly rains.

Comfort and money

We can’t stop the rains, but we can stop them from spreading shit into people’s cooking areas, bedrooms, and neighbours’ homes. For several years, we have been supporting an ecological sanitation programme in the region, in which elevated, alternating-twin pit toilets have been constructed with local government, community, and Water For People support. It was time to have a look and see what was working and what was not. Gladys is one of the women “thinking out of the bowl” in her community, and seeing how ecological sanitation can make her life more comfortable, beyond having a safe, private, place to go to the bathroom, but also putting some much-needed income in her pocket.

Gladys breaks out into a hearty laugh as we come up with creative strategies on how to get difficult men in the neighbourhood on the pot, as we walk over to her field trial site. Since emptying her toilet last year for the first time, Gladys has been experimenting with plants and fertilizers. She thinks she has found the magic mix, after trying several different types of fertilizers on a variety of ornamental plants and citrus fruits.

She doesn’t think small, though, this 34 year old mother of three. Recently, her women’s group won a 30,000 Boliviano ($4,200) prize for productive sanitation. They have been collecting neighbours’ compost and they started a small business selling plants. Her customers say that her plants are larger than others of the same age and in the past few months since the business began, she has pulled in several hundred bolivianos. This is the first year she

is starting to see some of her investments come back and surely this cold hard cash prize will help take this to the next level.

Bathroom

As we saunter under umbrellas from house to house, we stop at a large piece of land that she is renting for the construction of a much larger production area. Gulping down chicha de maiz, she points out the work that they have already done and the excitement in her voice for her future plans is contagious. “Ese baño es una maravilla,” she says as she gives it a gentle pat, “no solamente no huele, es más sano, y me da unos bolivianitos.” (This bathroom is a wonder; not only does it not smell bad, it’s healthier and gives me a little bit of income).

Glady’s story is a bright one in a sea of failed sanitation projects not only in San Pedro, but the world over. One of the lessons learned after the 1980s International Water and Sanitation Decade, was that sanitation programming must be determined by customer demand. Gladys is an “early adopter” as marketers would call her and her successful toilet-fertiliser-plant business could be just the local catalyst needed to convince others to use their bathroom effectively, and to reap some of the “unconventional” benefits, too.

One of the prize winning field stories in the Source story contest 2010. Kate Fogelberg ([email protected]), Regional Manager, South America, Water For People.

Gladys Quispe, the ‘compost’ lady

Gladys’nursery using manure from her toilet with plants in used yoghurt bags.


Northern Uganda: Water’s open doorAt Akodokodoi village in Northern Uganda, the tree divides us. On one side, we the project staff from CARE and partner organisations sit on short wooden folding chairs, forming a loose circle with the men. On the other side of the tree the women settle themselves on the ground. I wonder if they prefer this shield of separateness, the better to breastfeed their children or shift them around on their laps. Some look off into the distance or tug distractedly at tufts of grass, their legs stretched out in front of them.

But to assume the women to be disinterested observers would be a mistake. After the men speak of how the community worked with us to get the borehole that is now their main water source, we ask the women what difference the borehole has made for them. They speak without hesitation and with the precision of those that know what they’re talking about. The first thing a woman named Janet Adongo says is that that their husbands don’t beat them anymore. In the past, they would leave early in the morning to walk three kilometres to the nearest water point at a school. Once there, they stood in line for hours. They came home to find husbands irate with hunger because lunch hadn’t been prepared yet and suspicious of their wives’ whereabouts. Violence ensued.

“This facility is encouraging our husbands to love us more,” says one woman.

The fact that lack of water close by leads to domestic violence was no surprise to me, having seen in other countries how water scarcity affects practically every aspects of domestic life. Yet this situation seemed particularly egregious.

“Why,” I question with the boldness of the naïve, “do the men not believe their wives when they say it takes half a day to get water?”

At this point, the pace of the conversation picks up. There is some back and forth between the men and the women. The rest of us wait impatiently for the translation.

As I understand it, the men’s viewpoint boils down to this: collecting water is a woman’s burden to shoulder. One of the men goes as far as to say that he paid a bride price for his wife and the issue of going to verify how long it takes to get water is none of his business, she must work. A woman counters that she finds the issue of bride price insulting.

The situation in Akodokodoi village is by no means typical. But it’s far from unusual. It was proof to me that water is not a neutral issue but rather a deeply gendered and political one. Women get stuck with the burden of collecting it, a matter in which they have little choice. Women are usually left out of decisions about how water is used and accessed, particularly when it is used for productive purposes like agriculture.

Access to safe water reduces death from diarrhoeal disease, helps keep children in school and frees up time that can be spent making a living. But this only temporarily ameliorates some of the unfairness to women and girls. If water scarcity increases once again, girls will be the first ones to be pulled out of school to search for water while their brothers remain undisturbed.

What are the implications for development organisations, donors, governments and other actors who promote, advocate and directly implement interventions that increase access to safe water and sanitation? If providing access to safe water and sanitation puts us at the nexus of power and prejudice it also gives us an open door into changing and challenging cultural and institutional norms that perpetuate inequity. Doing so not only improves the effectiveness of the programmes, as we’ve

seen from direct experience in projects that prioritise women’s involvement, but also has far-reaching repercussions, as these norms are also at the heart of many other poverty and social justice issues.

Willing to challenge the status quo?

For development organisations, what if one of our criteria for selecting communities to assist with water access was whether they would be willing to challenge the status quo, having men and boys help with water collection responsibilities? What if policy makers prioritised women’s control and ownership of water and land as an important issue as their right to an education? What if councils and watershed management bodies actively sought the participation of women in decision-making bodies, realising that men and women think about and use water in very different ways? What if donors supported smarter policies towards the provision of water and sanitation?

After its heated turn, the conversation in Akodokodoi village flowed to other testimonies of what a critical difference the water point made for the community. But I was most moved by the early words of those women who were not afraid to speak the truth. Let’s act with the same boldness.

One of the prize winning field stories in the Source stories contest.

Malaika Wright, Learning and Communications Officer, CARE USA Water Team, [email protected]

Meeting with men, Photo: CARE 2010

Helping the people of Masaba sub-county access water and sanitation through joining handsI am Bilabi Moses, a second year student of the Uganda Christian University. I come from Buboolo parish, Bukissa Village, Masaba sub-county in Sironko district of Eastern Uganda. Masaba sub-county is characterised as being hilly since it is in the Mt Elgon region and blessed with many rivers.

The sanitation and safety of the water here is still poor because of constant heavy rains

that flood and contaminate the waters making it unsafe for drinking. The poor sanitation in Masaba communities is mainly due to ignorance and conservativeness since almost 60% of the population is illiterate. The water and sanitation problems have resulted in poverty because of constant visits to hospitals as a result of water and sanitation related diseases. In some places where our intervention in water has not

reached, women move for fairly long distances to look for protected springs. The number of latrines in families is low compared to the population in that some families have resorted to sharing latrines and this is as a result of poverty, laziness and lack of knowledge on sanitation.

InterventionAs a young boy, the Masiyompo Movement which works in this sub-county, supported

me as an orphan and this motivated me to take up some of the challenges they were facing in order to address the water and sanitation needs of the communities. In 2004, they saw the need to set up a sustainable water project in Masaba sub-county and this project was instituted. It has supplied several communities in sub-county with safe piped water using gravity flow technology. Today this has helped families to spend less on medication as it used to do because the water is 90% safe for consumption and free from contaminations by man and animals, unlike river water. Sanitation has improved at least by 10% from 30% to 40%.

In 2009, I started an active role in seeing that water and sanitation improves through my effort. I started going for various workshops on water and sanitation to gather more information on best practices from other organisations, donors’ advice and line ministry advice and bringing it home for practical experience. For example, I attended conferences in Speke Resort Munyonyo in October 2009 and East African sanitation conference on 2nd-4th March 2010. I gave presentations there and got knowledge in an effort to improve the water and sanitation in our communities. This enabled me to bring home pictorials, books to our communities so that they can learn as they derive lessons on what they see.

Disseminating lessons to communities

We have developed an extensive base of WASH information so that communities are able to join hands in taking up the challenge of improving the accessibility of water and sanitation. I am also documenting several proposals requesting for funds so that our communities can access more water and improve their hygiene and sanitation state. I have imitated the idea of promoting learning forums at the parish level every five months where we call together community leaders of water and sanitation activities so that they can share achievements, problem and failures

Positive outcomes

A number of positive outcomes have been realised as a result our effort in struggling to address the water and sanitation issues of the communities in Masaba sub-counties:

1. Firstly our effort has resulted in the construction of the multimillion gravity flow scheme. This has helped women and children to access clean safe water from nearby. It has reduced the prevalence of related diseases.

2. In addition, through learning forums and community sensitisation, communities have gained more knowledge on sanitation promotion in homes and water management.

3. On water management, we have instituted water management committees composed of three men and two women in every village were water

has reached so that sustainability is realised.

4. I have developed a data bank with pictorials showing water and sanitation activities so that communities can learn from within and outside their geographical locations hence improving the access.

5. There is increased community participation and sharing of knowledge through door to door sensitisations, joint action on water and sanitation activities and learning forums.

6. Sanitation and hygiene has improved up to 40% through effective and innovative approaches.

What have you done to ensure that you and your neighbour get water and improve hygiene and sanitation?

Dear ladies, gentlemen and children the access of water and sanitation calls for a joint effort and not only governments and donors as many of us think. As an individual what have you done to ensure that you and your neighbour get water and improve hygiene and sanitation? It calls for love for one another so that we realise the need for sharing the few water resources around us. It gives me pleasure to give this message and the contribution we have made including my effort to see communities in Masaba happy especially on the issue of water and sanitation.

One of the prize winning field stories in the Source stories contest.

Moses Bilabi is a 23-year old community water and sanitation promoter, Ugandan Christian University, Mbale campus, P.O.Box 189, Mbale, Uganda, e-mail: [email protected]

Top three Source hits feature online articles in 2010IRC endeavours to generate and post on line the best, most insightful, informative, and provocative WASH stories from the field we can find, using the online Source pages and “The voice from communities” blog http://voiceofcommunities.wordpress.com/.

The top three most viewed Source articles on the IRC website last year were:1. Atono school in Kenya (http://www.

irc.nl/page/54200) (Authors: Dick de Jong and Ingeborg Krukkert), was part of the Regional Programme - East Africa newsfeed. The picture story focused on water and sanitation improvements at this school in Kenya and attracted 684 viewers. The Antono school study aimed to find out if the Kenyan Ministry of Health’s standard ratio of 1 latrine to 25 girls and 1 toilet to 30 boys can be

downgraded if pupils also have access to urinals. It seems like the concept of urinals for girls was one that intrigued readers.

2. IRC ran a contest entitled “Tell us a story – for pride and a prize” (http://www.irc.nl/page/51946) (Author: Caridad Machín Camacho). And Source Bulletin sent out an international call for stories based on communities and applied interventions which helped (or failed to improve) sanitation and hygiene situations. 399 people followed this post during 2010, and 30 stories were submitted. Thanks to the positive reaction from readers, IRC decided to continue the contest into 2011.

3. Another Source feature: “Ethiopia: the success of the ArborLoo latrine” (http://www.irc.nl/page/51945) (Authors:

Mayling Simpson-Hebert and Dennis Warner) took third place, with 395 views. The ArborLoo is the simplest of all eco toilets and treats human excreta as a resource to be utilised rather than waste to be avoided. The ArborLoo is steadily becoming part of Ethopian rural culture. After each use, a cup of soil and wood ash mixture is added to encourage composting, reduce smell, and discourage insects.

IRC will continue to track website activity in 2011 in order to spot trends and useful ways to share stories and information.

Please send you stories to: [email protected]

Caridad Machín Camacho & Angelica de Jesus


Quotes highlighting the links in the chain for sustainable services Ghanaian planning processes do not systematically address the full range of post-construction costs to ensure indefinite provision of WASH services, according to Dr. Kwabena Nyarko, of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He is the director of the WASHCost project in Ghana which has found inadequate co-ordination between planning, budgeting and finance.

The sustainability of water services for people in rural and peri-urban areas depends on a whole chain of things going right - from the Ministry of Water, Works and Housing in the capital down to the water vendor in a community.

This chain is reflected in a photo story produced by IRC with WASHCost Ghana and the Resource Centre Network in Ghana. In “From Top to Bottom” a whole chain of people from the Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing to a water vendor in the community reflect on the link between costs and services from their own unique point of view.

The Hon. Alban S. K. Bagbin, Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing himself grew up in a rural area and understands the challenge of meeting the Millennium Development Goals. “We are compelled to spend a lot more in replacing broken down water systems, either because of lack of maintenance, or because of lack of knowledge,” he says.

Minta Aboagye, Director of the Water Directorate, stresses the need to provide

communities with services that they can afford and for the communities to be able to assess what goes into the management of a facility. That would help the directorate to budget properly and communities to make their contributions. According to the director, “Once we know how much it will cost to provide these levels of services, then it will help us also to make appropriate financial commitments to be able to deliver the service.”

Mrs Theodora Adomako-Adjei, the Extension Services Co-ordinator for the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) understands a good service as convenience, availability and accessibility. Her focus is on equipping people with the right knowledge, information, the skills, and, “the right attitude to take care of the facility.” Her question is, “How much will it cost to actually change human behaviour?”

Mrs. Fay Ephrim, Eastern Zonal Planner for CWSA says the focus should be on long-term planning that looks at trends in costs, housing, and energy. CWSA wants communities to be able to sustain services as long as possible.

Bosomtwe District

Much of the burden to plan and deliver sustainable services falls to district professionals. District Water and Sanitation Plans address the capital costs for installation of new systems, but do not yet address significant reinvestment in keeping infrastructure going nor the costs of institutional support related to monitoring and training. In practice, when a major breakdown occurs, the facilities are typically abandoned.

In Bosomtwe District in the Ashanti region, professionals reflect on these issues

Mr. Bartholomew Amponsah, the District Water and Sanitation Engineer, is involved in proposing district budgets to the district assembly. Sometimes, the district does not have enough money to cover monitoring costs, which prevents visits to communities. According to the engineer, if you do not visit, some communities will let anybody fetch water for free and fail to generate the required revenue.

Mr. Francis Asare Kusi of the Kuntanase Water and Sanitation Development Board

manages the local water system. He accepts the challenge of providing a continuous flow of potable water to a growing population, but points out that “local funds cannot cover the costs of expansion”.

Mr. Augustine Owusu, Abono WatSan Committee Treasurer, verifies the costs of parts from the area mechanic. He feels his community should charge more for water, like other communities do. Too little revenue is generated because some people would rather go to the lake for free.

Kune Banahene, an area mechanic for 11 years, says that towns sometimes fail to maintain systems but still expect the company or NGO to come back and repair the system. He only repairs systems of communities who are serious about maintaining facilities.

Water vendor Akua Afriyei is concerned that if the pump in a village borehole breaks down it is impossible to maintain services. The community cannot afford to install another borehole itself, but if they had one more borehole they could maintain it without taking loans.

The photo story was made in Ghana by Nick Dickinson with photographer Peter DiCampo. Bismark Dwumfour-Asare from WASHCost did some of the interviews and Rebecca Obuobisa-Darko provided the narration.

Nick Dickinson

News from WSSCC Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council

The road to SACOSAN IV: addressing equity and inclusion issues The 4th South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN 4) will be hosted from 4-8 April 2011 in Sri Lanka. South Asia has progressed relatively well with sanitation and hygiene policies, institutions and investments. However it remains the region of the world with the largest number of people without sanitation, together with widespread poor hygienic practices, and consequently is unlikely to achieve the MDGs on sanitation. Several sector players have teamed up in the run-up to SACOSAN 4 to bring the voices of the people to the podium and raise the challenges around the unserved in the region, with a view to seeing increased commitments and meaningful collaborative action reflected in the meeting outcomes and beyond.

A hugely challenging area for support across South Asia is the difficulty of reaching largely invisible, marginalised groups and individuals. Equity and inclusion remains an intention, rather than a systematic approach. Action toward the improvement of menstrual hygiene management and services for disabled people are implemented in specific projects, but are not mainstreamed in larger national programmes. Several international and national actors such UNICEF, WaterAid, UN Habitat, the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), the Water Supply and

Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), national think tanks and non-governmental organisations have undertaken studies on specific dimensions of equity and inclusion in South Asia. Using SACOSAN as an opportunity, four organisations (UNICEF, WA, WSP and WSSCC) have come together to prepare a regional synthesis paper on equity and inclusion in South Asia, to take stock of what is available and work that has already been done, to learn lessons and catalyse thinking and action for the future. The paper and accompanying audio-visuals will be shared over the next two

months in the region with our partners and government, inviting suggestions and using opportunities presented nationally.

The overall aim is to prepare a regional synthesis that will be shared nationally and then be used to catalyse discussions during the SACOSAN conference itself with the aim of generating practical joined-up action and advocacy from civil society and mainstream sector actors (government, donors, investors, implementers) in order to direct investments, research and action to where it is needed most.

As in previous SACOSAN meetings, strong civil society participation is being enabled through collaborative action and support by Fresh Water Action Network-South Asia (FANSA), WA and WSSCC and other agencies in the region. National committees have been set up to strengthen grassroots engagement for SACOSAN 4 with activities that include civil society pre-meetings, national consultations, research on service delivery in the region and a linked video on people’s views on sanitation services. The People’s Perceptions Research especially addresses groups that are left out or unserved in some way and is commissioned by the regional partnership of WSSCC, Water Aid, Freshwater Action Network (FAN).

For more information contact [email protected].

When faced with a difficult problem, one of the best ways to determine the way ahead is to ask the advice of someone who has faced a similar situation. This logic motivated a group of extremely enthusiastic WASH practitioners from Liberia and Sierra Leone to visit Bangladesh in November 2010. They came to talk to people in Dhaka and rural Chittagong about how to address issues of sanitation, hygiene and water supply.

Bangladesh was chosen as their destination because the country has been a global leader in implementing new approaches driven by community-led demand creation. The countries have much in common. They share similar challenges including the disruption of societies torn apart by war

and violence, certain geographic features, increased urbanisation, extreme poverty among many members of society and huge challenges to improve the access to safe sanitation. But they also share many of the same advantages: community leaders committed to improving social and economic development, forward looking populations who are optimistic about the prospects for their children, and dedicated professionals who recognise the urgency of ensuring good sanitation, hygiene and water for all members of society.

The delegates from West Africa, nine from Liberia and two from Sierra Leone, represented a cross-section from government and civil society, including faith-based groups, women’s alliances

and youth groups. The week-long programme involved meetings and site visits to examine different programmatic approaches, including Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), sanitation marketing, and urban programming. Participants were enthusiastic to learn about sanitary toilets adapted for disabled people, and about ecological sanitation and biogas. Staff members from the national NGOs Dushtha Shasthya Kendra (DSK) and Village Education Resource Centre (VERC), the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank (WSP), and members of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) National Coalition Bangladesh were generous in sharing their expertise and time with the delegates. The learning

Toilets that are designed for disabled people, such as here in Dhaka, remain an exception

(photo: Amanda Marlin, WSSCC)

West African delegates visit Bangladesh – a great example of sharing and learning between countries


WSSCC, 15, chemin Louis-Dunant, 1202 Geneva, Switzerland.

Tel.: +41 22 560 8181, fax: +41 22 560 8184, e-mail: [email protected], http://www.wsscc.org

trip was devised, and primarily funded by WSSCC, with support to individual delegates being offered by WaterAid and WASH Consortium Liberia. Visits to programme sites resulted in questions and discussions with project staff and members of the community. In the evenings, delegates shared their impressions and planned how to apply what they had learnt to challenges back home.

The participants left with notebooks full of good ideas, a draft plan for implementation in their countries, and names and email addresses of many in Bangladesh who offered to stay in touch. They had also been glad to have the opportunity to share their own solutions and approaches with colleagues in Bangladesh – in clear recognition that good learning is always a two-way process.

WSSCC sees this style of learning trip as a great example of South-South exchange. Preparation before the trip, hard work in country, and ongoing follow-up, have all been aimed at ensuring lasting benefits – especially when these experiences will be used to improve WASH for the poorest and those in most need.

More details about the learning trip can be obtained from [email protected].

Menstrual Hygiene ManagementIn November 2010, WaterAid, with support from the research consortium SHARE, brought together 16 practitioners and researchers with expertise in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), health, equity and inclusion, education and gender to share knowledge and experiences and develop a research programme for menstrual hygiene management (MHM).

The roundtable was convened to bring together a multi-disciplinary group of experts on menstrual hygiene management in order to: • Assess the state of knowledge on MHM;• Identify key research questions for policy

and practice;

• Establish a community of practice of individuals and institutions passionate about this issue; to share, work, influence and therefore respond to the strategic and practical challenges of women and girls regarding MHM.

The overall spirit and sentiments of the roundtable can be summarised by the following statement: “Menstrual hygiene management is fundamental to the dignity of women and girls and an integral part of basic sanitation and hygiene services for which every woman and girl has a right. Menstrual hygiene management needs to be seen also within the overall equity and inclusion paradigm as a neglected issue.

It cuts across other vulnerabilities such as disability, location, poverty, class, caste and religion according to the context.”

Menstrual hygiene management is complex and needs to be addressed holistically and in context as a package of services that includes voice and space to talk about the issue, adequate water, privacy, facilities for washing and disposal, and, most importantly, increased awareness amongst men, women, boys and girls.

To download the briefing note issued after the roundtable please visit http://www.wsscc.org/resources/resource-publications/briefing-note-menstrual-hygiene-management. For more information contact: [email protected].

WSSCC to Host Global Forum on Sanitation and HygieneWSSCC will host a Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene from 9 to 14 October 2011 at the Mumbai Renaissance Convention Centre, bringing some 500 WSSCC members and sector professionals together in India for a week of sharing and learning around vital sanitation and hygiene topics.

The overarching themes for the week are “Accelerating Change,” “Building Knowledge and Capacity,” and “Sharing Across Regions”. These and other cross-cutting topics will be reflected in the forum’s programme via plenary, break-out

and regional sessions; special events and field visits; and a “Bottom of the Pyramid WASH Fair” of organisations, products and services, and ideas.

The meeting provides a global platform for sharing knowledge and findings from the regional sanitation conferences held recently or coming up in East Asia, South Asia, Africa and Latin America. It also draws in lessons from the impressive sanitation accomplishments in China and will offer instructive and inspirational field visits

to key programmes and sites in India’s Maharashtra State, which is a leader in the region in innovative service delivery at scale. It will feature a unique blend of sector professionals (both WSSCC members and non-members), active global advocates and development experts.

A participant selection process will ensure balanced representation between WSSCC members and non-members, and from developing and developed countries. For more information, or to join the mailing list for forum updates, visit www.wsscc.org.

Confirm your WSSCC membership or join now!WSSCC is a membership organisation that aims at mobilising people with the collective ambition of ensuring access to sanitation, water supply and hygiene for all; informing, engaging and enabling people to better carry out their WASH work, particularly through networking and knowledge sharing; and ensuring that the

focus of WSSCC’s work is connected to local communities and local issues. Since November 2010 WSSCC has a new website with a member-dedicated area where members can participate in the WSSCC governance process, search and network with one-another, engage in conversations and more. To remain connected to WSSCC

all members who joined before November 2010 need to register again at http://www.wsscc.org/members/apply-membership. Prospective members can visit http://www.wsscc.org/members/about-membership and register online for free.

For any question regarding membership please contact: [email protected].

News from IRC and partners

Ensuring rural water services that last: Lessons from a 13-country study

Approximately one in three rural water supply systems in developing countries does not function at all or is performing well below its expected level. Failure on this scale represents hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted investment and millions of people who have had to return to fetching dirty drinking water from distant sources - to the detriment of their health, education, and livelihoods.

While the problem of poor sustainability - and the threat it poses to achieving the MDGs - may be well recognised, concrete steps for addressing it are considerably less clear. Triple-S - an IRC initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - recently completed a 13-country study to identify factors that contribute to, or constrain, the delivery of sustainable rural water services at scale.

The study - which examined trends in rural water supply in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Colombia, Honduras, and the United States - showed that many countries are moving from a focus on infrastructure to a service delivery approach - one that would support the reliable and continuous delivery of rural water services. However,

the study also revealed a number of common weak points.

Considering all the costs

One of the most critical gaps is the lack of life-cycle costing - costing that includes everything from capital investment to minor and major repairs, direct and indirect support costs and the costs of capital for asset replacement. Even in the USA, rural water service providers must tap various and unstructured sources of soft loans and grants from state and federal government to cover major repairs and replacement costs.

In many of the other countries studied, communities must wait for a major breakdown and then apply to local government, the NGO that implemented the original project, or donors for funds. These are often not readily available, leading to long, and sometimes permanent, disruptions in service. Burkina Faso provided one of the few examples of a structured approach to capital maintenance financing. Here 40 small towns and rural villages were able to pool together resources, contract a private operator to handle maintenance, and institute a revolving fund to cover major expenditures.

In addition, the study showed that financing for functions such as post-construction support, back-up for communities, support to local government and learning platforms is seldom accounted for, although these functions have proved to be key to the reliable provision of services. Clear financial frameworks at sector level that clarify the costs of such support and learning appears to be one of the missing links in sustainable rural service delivery.

Coordinating all the players

Harmonisation and coordination between different actors working in the sector was also an issue across the board, and not only in the more aid-dependent countries. Common agreement and adherence to sector policy, norms and guidelines is an essential building block for working at scale. Thailand, South Africa and Uganda were the standouts in terms of scalable

approaches. In the case of Uganda, for example, there is a strong national policy framework supported by a SWAp (Sector Wide Approach).

One of the main lessons from the study is that attempting to make changes through isolated projects and programmes does not work. To achieve real change, the entire system needs to be addressed: policy, institutions, legislation and structures need to be clarified and modified as necessary to enable the delivery of a service, rather than simply the construction of infrastructure.

The study has identified ten key factors in improving sustainability of rural water supply services:1. Professionalisation of community

management, including appropriate legal status for water committees, support services and stronger monitoring and oversight functions.

2. Increased recognition and promotion of alternative service provider options including small-scale private operators and self supply.

3. Sustainability indicators and targets for services delivered and performance of service providers.

4. Standardisation of implementation approaches defining common national-level frameworks - or ‘rules of the game’ - with norms and standards, but with flexibility in implementation.

5. Post-construction support to service providers established and funded to back-up and monitor community management entities, or small private operators.

6. Capacity support to decentralised government (service authorities) covering all key functions in the life-cycle of rural water supply services.

7. Learning and sharing of experience supported at national and decentralised levels.

8. Planning for asset management carried out systematically with financial forecasting and inventory updates.

9. Adequate frameworks for financial planning to cover all life-cycle costs,


IRC, P.O. Box 82327, 2508 EH, The Hague, the Netherlands, Tel. : +31 70 3044000, fax: +31 70 3044044, e-mail: [email protected],

http://www.irc.nl.

particularly capital maintenance costs and direct and indirect costs of post-construction support.

10. Regulation of rural services and service providers through appropriate mechanisms/regulatory agents at the local level.

IRC Symposium challenges WASH sector to cost and finance sustainable services

The IRC 2010 international symposium posed a series of challenges to the water and sanitation sector to improve its ability to cost and finance sustainable services – and to understand the price that communities pay when those services fail.

The symposium, Pumps, Pipes and Promises held in the Hague from 16-18 November brought together 120 researchers, practitioners, economists, engineers and governance specialists from 27 countries to draw together issues around costs, financing and accountability.

It was strongly supported, with 40 papers presented from UNICEF, WaterAid, Plan, Water and Sanitation Program, Transparency International and many other key sector organisations. The first preliminary results from the WASHCost project to identify costs in four countries were released in a series of papers.

Sustainable services is the aim

The overall focus was the need to switch from infrastructure to sustainable services in water, sanitation and hygiene. It reflected a shift in the WASH sector towards greater clarity in planning and financing services that reach people with the regularity and quality they demand.

The Symposium called for data that can be understood by those who make funding decisions and greater accountability and transparency on costs and services.

More openness of data will empower decision makers and the people who hold the decision makers to account. However, donors and governmental decision makers were under-represented at the Symposium. There is a communication challenge to reach them with these arguments and this information. There was a call for the methodologies for collecting costs and key messages from the research to be documented and communicated effectively, with training to spread these skills.

Accountability gives citizens the right to challenge abuses

There was a consensus that corruption needs to be tackled wherever it occurs. This means having effective regulatory bodies, and providing citizens with clear information so that they can challenge misuse of funds and resources. Without transparency, accountability, and improved access to information, cost data is unlikely to improve outcomes.

The background paper for the Symposium, (Pezon, Fonseca & Butterworth, 2010) points out that decentralisation has the potential to build a stronger link between citizens and their services. “However, administrative capacities and checks and balances are also generally less developed at this level, and the dangers of corruption taking root within newly decentralised

service delivery arrangements have been highlighted.”

Crisis at community level

The high level of support needed to keep community services running in rural areas was underlined by detailed figures from two municipalities in South Africa where technical support costs represented between a half and two thirds of the total operational costs for water services and repairs to pumps were often beyond the capacity of village based CBOs.

One area in the spotlight was the failure of community management to provide a mechanism to deal with substantial maintenance, in a context where a US$ 50,000 borehole often fails because the US$ 500 handpump cannot be replaced. Patrick Moriarty of IRC pointed out that it is unreasonable to expect communities to keep large enough reserves for larger scale repairs and capital maintenance. Alternative mechanisms, such as some

Fast facts on sustainability

• Percentage of hand pumps in sub-Saharan Africa that are not functioning: 36% • Number of water supply systems in Tanzania that fail within two years of installation:

1 in 4• Amount needed to address water supply and sanitation capital maintenance backlogs

in the United States over the next 20 years: US$ 1.3 trillion • Percentage of the estimated cost of meeting the MDG water and sanitation target

that is needed for maintenance and replacement of existing infrastructure: 74%• Percentage of drinking-water and sanitation funding from eight major donor agencies

that goes to maintenance or replacement of existing infrastructure: 13%.

Sarah Garriger

Burkina Faso working group

form of mutualisation, are needed to spread the risks.

Households carry the burden

There is much less understanding of the costs of sanitation and hygiene than of water – but it is clear from the preliminary findings from WASHCost that many households bear the majority of these costs themselves.

Symposium organiser and facilitator, Alana Potter from IRC, said: “Findings coming out of WASHCost with respect to the kinds of investments households are making in water and sanitation improvement but also

in hygiene, show that many people in poor countries across the world are investing huge amounts of money, effort and time in improving their lives.”

The high cost of failure

Catarina Fonseca, Director of the WASHCost Project, pointed out how expensive it is to provide low quality water and sanitation services. WASHCost research suggests that switching from boreholes with handpumps to small piped services can triple the costs of service delivery, but often leaves people with service levels somewhere between sub-standard and basic. “The cost ranges are huge for providing the same low levels of service – for water between sub-standard and basic. What we are finding is if you want to go from basic to the next stage higher up, you need a much higher investment effort, not in the capital expenditure component – but in all the other components.”

WASHCost has proposed service ladders for water and sanitation with five levels: no service, sub-standard, basic, intermediate and high. It is no longer enough to count the number of water points or toilets - providing safe, reliable services is all important.

World Water Day 2011: Waste water is a liquid asset Waste water is a liquid asset was the slogan that came up in a discussion on World Water Day 2011 during the last day of the international conference 'Sustainable Water Management in Cities in Zaragoza. On 17 December 2010 participants discussed WWD 2011 messages that UN-HABITAT had tabled. Participants gave their inputs to the messages by writing their comments on posters that were displayed for days in the corridors of the venue.

Here is a summary of the comments and inputs:

• Proposed slogan for the messages under the sanitation and pollution theme: waste water is a liquid asset.

• Education and capacity building were missing in the WWD 2011 messages provided by UN-HABITAT.

• There need to be concrete messages for what people can do at household level.

• We need fewer and simpe messages.• Create the messages in such a way that

they provide the solution.

Switching politicians on to sustainable city water

Politicians do not want to be associated with things that are bad. It is important to support and engage politicians to learn how water management can be improved and improve the environment.

These two important lessons for water sector advocates emerged from the December 2010 conference 'Sustainable Water Management in Cities: engaging stakeholders for effective change', held in Zaragoza, Spain . They came out of

Who pays for what?

Keynote speaker, David Hall, Director of the Public Services International Research Unit, argued that the main provider of finance is and will continue to be the Governments of developing countries themselves. He called for aid to be redirected to support countries that have low tax revenues, and said that the private sector has little role to play in financing water and sanitation services in low income countries.

Symposium combined research and practical experience

The symposium was hailed as a success by organisers and participants. Alana Potter said: “What‘s exciting is that we are starting to see the synthesis of three critical ideas in terms of costs, accountability and financing, which are often seen as particular disciplines in themselves. We are starting to see more interdisciplinary sharing and the synergies starting to emerge between those three content areas. “

Peter McIntyre

Download the 19 page Synthesis report from the Symposium at http://www.irc.nl/page/61225.

Eddy Perez and Arjan Naafs sharing knowledge

• The word ‘local government’ is not reflected in the messages – they are the ones that have to make things happen at the local level.

• Financing needs to go to local governments, not central governments.

More inputs received on the messages will be made available in the conference highlights booklet.

discussions about the political opportunities and challenges for sustainable water management in cities.

Other political lessons include:• Positive messages are critical. • Raise awareness among the public.

Political will begins with the people.• Tailor your approach. Political

frameworks differ in different countries.• Engage and treat politicians as

stakeholders. Politicians have interest in providing water to the people.

• Find politicians who can influence changes in the legal frameworks.

• Highlight the benefits for engaging the politician.

• Science provides trust – it is something for politicians to rely on.

• Politicians may only be ‘decision-approvers’, while civil servants may be the key decision-makers. The latter can be easier to engage too, so a good tactic.

UN-HABITAT is the lead UN agency for this year’s World Water Day that has as theme Water for Cities: Responding to the Urban Challenge, see their site http://www.worldwaterday2011.org.


Cities can show the way to sustainable, efficient and equitable management of water resources Achieving sustainable development requires that we institutionalise and act upon lessons learned in the arena of urban water management and city development.

Holistic approaches, methods and skills are needed to enable successful cooperation and collaboration, including communication techniques which enable stakeholders to exchange knowledge, views and preferences so as to build a collective, feasible vision of the future and an effective programme of implementation.

• To make the case for stakeholder engagement we have to show outcomes such as reduced pollution or

new policies. One group argued that sustainability is more likely from good stakeholder engagement.

• Contexts are very different. Stakeholder engagement is more alien and difficult in some places than others.

• Stakeholder engagement processes always have their objectives (it is done for a reason), and this is one reason why processes all look very different.

• Many transferable lessons were identified, including the need for intensive facilitation, a common baseline of information, involving stakeholders in action research and creating the right incentives.

• Important that good things are not compromised by political changes - they need to be institutionalised.

• Create awareness and build alliances, before taking on difficult and controversial issues.

The Zaragoza City Council, the UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication, the SWITCH consortium and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), organised this five day conference from, 13-17 December 2010 to contribute to the sustainable management of water in cities. It brought together experts, local government officials, media specialists, key water operators and political representatives of cities and stakeholder groups to discuss issues, propose practical ways to progress the international agenda and share solutions for engaging stakeholders. This event was also used as an intermediary step in preparations for World Water Day 2011, which focuses on urban water management.

Political and media engagement was the main target

Conference organisers targeted political and media people by spending a day on each discussing with them how best to get them

Specific outcomes of the meeting – especially case studies – will be presented on World Water Day on 22 March 2011.

A selection of SWITCH cities’ stories of change are available at: www.irc.nl/page/61309 See the official conference website at: www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/swm_cities_zaragoza_2010/index.shtmlThe daily newsletter with interviews of participants and reports from the sessions is available at: http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/swm_cities_zaragoza_2010/daily_newsletter.shtml

Petra Brussee

on board for more sustainable city water management. Of the 157 participants, 23 were political representatives, such as mayors and councillors, 26 were high level public administration directors, 18 were media and communication experts (but only 8 of these were independent journalists).

“If they want the politicians to engage, why are they organising a separate field visit for them?”, asked one of the political representatives in the Conference Daily newsletter.

Lessons on media engagement

There were lessons too on how to engage with the media – and how not to!

Dalia Abdel-Salam, from Egypt, said: “Sometimes as journalists we are in big trouble. Experts expect that the journalists write about their research in their paper, but they do not try to simplify their research - and make it accessible for the reader.”

Rebecca Munetsi, from Namibia, needs good ammunition to ensure her stories are well used. “The problem I’m facing comes from the newsroom. That is where the pressure comes from. For them water is old news. I always have to convince my editor.”

Roel Landingin from the Philippines stressed that you could not just expect journalists to write what you wanted. They would take their own line.

”We are really two different worlds. There are two different agendas. It is good to recognise that for realistic engagement. A good journalist is not expected to repeat, but to own and add value to a story. They won’t choose the intended story. This can be good and bad. You can’t hope to use them.”

This means that there is tension between being a journalist and being an advocate for a cause.

Dick de Jong and Petra Brussee

John Butterworth of IRC.

SOURCE Bulletin is published quarterly by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre in cooperation with the Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council.

Editor: Dick de Jong ([email protected]). Contributors: Cor Dietvorst ([email protected]); Caridad Machin Camacho ([email protected]); Petra Brussee ([email protected]); Nick Dickinson ([email protected]); Marielle Snel ([email protected]); Peter McIntyre ([email protected]); Dave Trouba ([email protected]).

IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, P.O. Box 82327, 2508 EH, The Hague, The Netherlands, tel. +31 70 3044000, fax +31 70 3044044, e-mail: [email protected]. Internet: http://www.irc.nl

You can subscribe to Source Weekly and the quarterly Special Features Edition via the Source web page at: http://www.source.irc.nl/ or by sending a message to: [email protected].

IRC to help African communities and schools boost community-led sanitation

The principles of community-led total sanitation are being extended to schools and urban areas in eight African countries. IRC will contribute especially to the school-led total sanitation (SLTS) component in a broader five-year programme led by Plan Netherlands.

Community-led total sanitation (CLTS), as originally devised, relies on community efforts to stop open defecation, promote use of toilets and improve hygiene practices. There are no subsidies for building toilets and no ‘rewards’ for communities that achieve 100% free status.

The Plan programme, “Empowering self-help sanitation of rural and peri-urban communities and schools in Africa”, started in 2010 and will expand existing self-help sanitation programmes in six African countries, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Malawi, and introduce it into Ghana and Niger.

Adding in schools and urban areas

IRC has done many years of work on school sanitation and hygiene education with UNICEF, and will lead on aspects of the school-led total sanitation programme, focusing on two areas:• Action research on the effect of

linking schools to the CLTS approach – do schools add impact to the overall approach?

• Learning alliance platforms in each of the countries

Plan is also working on an urban total sanitation component adapting what has been learnt in rural areas to urban and peri-urban settings. Plan has some experience on this in Dhaka, Bangladesh but not yet in Africa. However, urbanisation is growing rapidly in Africa and existing sanitation and hygiene circumstances are poor in peri-urban and urban areas, and the timing is right to start pilots in these countries.

This programme aims to reach the schools in both peri-urban and rural communities.

Schools can act as centres for change as schoolchildren bring home the lessons they have learnt about toilet use and hygiene behaviour, and are in contact with peers in the community.

To encourage the development of a market for toilets, the programme will engage the private sector, supporting local small or medium entrepreneurs to market the construction and maintenance of sanitation facilities. Another programme element in which IRC will play a role is in setting up national and international CLTS networks.

Sustainability of CLTS outcomes over time

Having capable long-term facilitators and community sanitation management organisations has been a major challenge in large CLTS programmes. Often, the initial trigger is easier than sustaining a programme as the population continues to grow and toilets grow older and need to be emptied, replaced, or upgraded. The crucial issue to ensure that ODF status is maintained over time, is to get and train committed and long-term facilitators and community sanitation management bodies at and below local government level. As the approach becomes locally institutionalised, local leadership often takes over, as in a peri-urban CLTS project in Sumatra (ISSDP, 2007) and in the Women, Wellbeing, Work, Waste and Sanitation (4WS) project in Bangladesh, Kerala and Sri Lanka (IRC et al., 2007). In Nepal and Pakistan, primary schools have been made part of the organisational support system for CLTS. Experience reported at the Regional Practitioners’ workshop organised by IRC, WaterAid, BRAC and WSSCC showed that especially where there is an unsettled society, schools can provide an effective and politically neutral entry point for CLTS (Khan et al 2008).

Sanitation networks in each country

In order to coordinate these approaches, the sanitation and hygiene implementation activities and results will be shared in a sanitation network, which still has to be created in most of the countries. Plan has established firm working relations at national and regional level with several organisations and governments. With the support of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), the knowledge hub of CLTS, and IRC, these national networks will support coordination as well as lobby for these approaches to be included in sanitation policies. By approaching these networks through learning alliances, coordination and quality will be strengthened. IDS is also doing research on effectiveness of CLTS.

The total budget for the programme is € 8.4 million, half of which is provided as a grant by the Netherlands Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS), one third is the estimated investment by communities in their own development, and the remaining part comes via Plan Netherlands from fund raising activities by Dutch primary school children.

For more information read the programme’s executive summary: http://sanitationupdates.wordpress.com/2010/06/. For more information on CLTS go to www.communityledtotalsanitation.org

Contacts:• PlanNederland,MaschaSingeling,e-mail:

[email protected], www.plannederland.nl

• IDS,RobertChambers,e-mail:[email protected] and Petra Bongartz, email: [email protected], www.communityledtotalsanitation.org

• IRC,MarielleSnel,email:[email protected],www.irc.nl/sanitation

Dick de Jong and Marielle Snel

Game played by school children near Hawasa, Ethiopia.

Village toilet