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Sustainability checks, clauses and compacts – USAID and DGIS lead the way
By Stef Smits Over the past year, there has been quite a bit of buzz in the WASH sector on the sustainability clause that DGIS seeks to include in its contacts with implementers. The pros and cons of...
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Subverting bad policy for the better
By Richard Ward, Aguaconsult The most recent Global Water Challenge (GWC) webinar hosted at www.sustainablewash.org gave another useful opportunity to highlight the findings of the Qualitative Document...
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Islands of success
Sagar is an island at the mouth of the river Ganges where it meets the Bay of Bengal. Every year in January, about half a million pilgrims visit the island to worship at the holy Ganges. The hundreds...
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Planning for impact
By Patrick Moriarty Back in June and July of 2012, Triple-S underwent a mid-term assessment (MTA) by an excellent team led by Dr. Ben Ramalingam. The MTA was a hugely useful exercise, allowing the...
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A bit short of a miracle …
By Patrick Moriarty and John Sauer What is it that IADB’s Max Valasquez Matute in Honduras finds ‘only a bit short of a miracle’? The decision by seven INGOs to align their programming in Honduras in...
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Flying the flag – but breaking the pump?
One of the topics of discussion during this week’s Triple-S annual meeting was around harmonization of approaches to rural water supply between donors and governments. Presenting the experiences in...
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“We ate all the meat; there are only bones to chew on now”
“Comimos toda la carne; sólo nos quedan los huesos” (we ate all the meat; there are only bones to chew on now”, said Luis Romero of CONASA (the water and sanitation policy making body in Honduras), in...
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Paris, s’éveille – waking up to the Paris Declaration
“Paris, s’éveille” (Paris wakes up), sang Jacques Dutronc, observing how the mess of the night is cleaned away, making place for the buzz of another day of work. Likewise, the WASH sector is waking up...
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Error 503: Service not available
By: Andrés Gil, IRC, Honduras As I was doing my interview with the technician of the Municipal Environment Unit, I encountered already the first limitation: “Error 503: Service not available”; internet...
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USAID’s new water strategy – when the numbers don’t add up
By Harold Lockwood (Aguaconsult) Well, probably it’s a cliché, but the USAID water strategy has had the gestation period of an elephant, but the good news is that now it’s out and its congratulations...
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At the start of true scale in monitoring
From testing monitoring service delivery indicators and tools in 3 pilot districts by the CWSA and Triple-S to applying monitoring at scale in 64 Ghanaian districts, one quarter of the country. That is...
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Still or sparkling? Lessons from a WASH holiday
I suspect that some of you, readers of this blog, are equal water nerds as I am, and that you also take your professional interest along on holiday. At least, I cannot resist visiting the odd water...
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USAID and Rotary International adopt innovative sustainability monitoring tool
By Harold Lockwood - This is great news and fantastic to see USAID adopting and promoting this approach which aims to really track and better understand the underlying causes of poor sustainability in...
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On strokes and leaks, or how to assess functionality and service levels of...
By: Marieke Adank, programme officer at IRC The Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) in Ghana is developing a framework for assessing and monitoring water services. In this, it will monitor the...
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The caretaker always SMSes twice
The costs of getting spare parts for handpumps can sometimes be higher than the costs of the spares themselves. Imagine a handpump where some of the nuts of bolts have worn out. These might cost a...
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Not-so-limited mechanised boreholes
Elder Joe, whom you still may remember from a previous blog post, is the proud secretary of a water committee in the outskirts of Odumase town in Ghana. The committee looks after a handpump that was...
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Warning: danger zone ahead! Or not?
In one of his previous blogs, Patrick Moriarty posed the concept of a danger zone, referring to the coverage level, at which countries that succeeded in raising first time coverage by constructing new...
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A Swedish Smorgasbord of sustainability: compacts, checks and clauses
By Harold Lockwood – During the recent World Water Week in Stockholm, the Directorate General for International Cooperation (DGIS) of the Netherlands Foreign Ministry and IRC International Water and...
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Public finance isn’t a dirty word – it’s essential to get services to the poor
By Patrick Moriarty - Three moments stood out for me in a busy week in Stockholm. The first was when WSUP’s Guy Norman said that Public Finance wasn’t a dirty word – a point that I couldn’t agree with...
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Only the Minister of Water and Environment can decommission a defunct water...
By Robert Otim, District Learning Facilitator, Lira district, Uganda - In an Inter-district, meeting (IDM) organised by Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) June 2013 in Kitgum, decommissioning of...
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