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.
Learning is critical to development, so development practitioners need to reflect on how to nurture learning processes. Read more...
Learning is not optional or just a box to tick off. Knowing what works, what doesn't, for whom and in which contexts is crucial to improve water, sanitation and hygiene interventions for services that last. But using lessons learned requires linking learning to purpose, with a joint vision and... Read more...
Research and learning are set to become important elements in national planning and monitoring of sanitation and water services. That is, at least, the aim of the Research and Learning (R&L) constituency of the Sanitation and Water for All global partnership (SWA). The R&L constituency will... Read more...
IRC’s roots are in knowledge management, capacity building and advocacy. Since our founding in 1968, our focus and ambition have evolved from generating knowledge and making it accessible to the sector, towards playing an active role in the facilitation of learning and systemic change in the... Read more...
The WASH sector is in consensus labelled as a complex system. Interventions need to cope with wicked problems and solutions strive for adaptive management as exit strategy. The bulk of the WASH projects deliver on the short-term. In three year Hygiene projects populations / schools / communities... Read more...
Two weeks ago, the “management and support” working group of the RWSN had its first meeting. This meeting focused specifically on management models and support arrangements for piped water supply in small towns. Read more...
Next week more than 200 practitioners and policy makers from government, civil society, private sector and donors will come together for the annual Joint Water and Environment Sector Review in Uganda to review progress and set-backs during the past year and discuss and decide on priorities for the... Read more...
The assumption information is 'only' required to 'flow' turned out to be false! First information has to be made... Read more...
Coming up with a convincing elevator pitch for our Sustainable Services at Scale Triple-S project has long been a challenge. Which, given the complexities of the rural water sector itself, is possibly not that surprising. Whether defining ourselves (at least in part) as a complexity informed water... Read more...
I mentioned some cool new outputs from IRC’s Ghana programme in my previous post. These factsheets present a rich picture of water services and their governance based on a total survey in our three Triple-S focus districts in Ghana. The fact sheets aren’t cool due to their content – which is... Read more...
It’s always difficult call these things, but I think (and hope) that the last couple of weeks may, in retrospect, come to be seen as a watershed on the long and painful road to achieving universal access to water and sanitation services worthy of the name. Read more...
We all know how successful team GB was at the London Olympics with 29 golds and 65 medals overall. This was a fantastic achievement and the result of years of preparation and putting into practice a comprehensive sports policy for the UK. It wasn’t just investment in the athlete or their equipment... Read more...
On the 20th of August the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre organised an in-house debate on the pros and cons of adding a sustainability clause in contracts between donors and implementers in Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes. Despite challenges in terms of creating a chain... Read more...
Our talk about 'sector learning' sometimes obscures the fact that it is people, individually or collectively, who learn and catalyse change. So, it's been inspiring to check in with four young professionals from Bangladesh, Ghana, Guatemala, and Uganda who are visiting IRC for their final de-... Read more...
Sustainability is on top of the list of countries, of development partners and of IRC. Now that we know about the high break down rates of pumps and pipes, we are alarmed. And we should be! Not only because breakdowns are a waste of investment and a waste of tax payers’ money, but because people... Read more...
Could Zimbabwe's once-strong lead in water and sanitation coverage in Southern Africa be recovered through the joint project Zimwash? Read more...
What does it cost to provide water services that last? What do we mean by a water service? Read more...
During our workshop last week we explored how Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Resource Centre Networks support learning in their WASH sectors and what change has resulted from their work so far. Read more...
Over the past days we discussed the conditions that have to be in place for a Resource Centre Network (RCN) to act as a vehicle for WASH sector learning. One of the conditions is to have a strong facilitator or coordinator in place . RCN facilitators in the ideal world have the right background,... Read more...
This week has brought a lot of reflecting and sharing about the ways that WASH Resource Centre Networks facilitate sector learning. Today, we spoke to Ton Schouten about the approach undertaken by the Triple-S project. Triple-S has developed a Service Delivery Approach for achieving sustainable... Read more...