This site has a wealth of resources for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practitioners collected by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Although the focus is on WASH resources for emergencies, many of the field tools and resources are also applicable in non-emergency situations. Of special interest are the WASH information, education materials (IEC) materials, which are made accessible by topic and regions.
World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) and UN-Water, 2012. United Nations world water development report 4 : managing water under uncertainty and risk. (World Water Development Report / United Nations; no. 4). [online] Paris, France: UNESCO. 3 vol. (xii, 867 p.; ill.; tab.; fig.; boxes; maps). ISBN 978-92-3-104235-5
Available at: <http://washurl.net/7e1itc>
The fourth edition of the World Water Development Report (WWDR4) is a comprehensive review of the world’s freshwater resources and seeks to demonstrate, among other messages, that water underpins all aspects of development, and that a coordinated approach to managing and allocating water is critical. The Report underlines that in order to meet multiple goals water needs to be an intrinsic element in decision-making across the whole development spectrum.
This report reviews the potential of mobile phones to improve governance in the development sector – a field termed “mobile phone for development” or M4D – with a special emphasis on the water, sanitation, and hygiene or WASH sector.
In particular, it focuses on “information interventions”: mobile phone usage for real-time, broad-based data collection and dissemination among and by multiple agents of change. Such information interventions are used not only to resolve immediate, short-term issues, but to facilitate the flow of information necessary for long term planning, monitoring, policy-making, and governance.
The report reviews the aspects of mobile phone solution design that impact the effectiveness of an information intervention.
It reviews ten selected organisations and their mobile phone projects in depth to determine whether there are broad-based lessons to be drawn from their experiences of system development and implementation.
Finally, the report summarises lessons that can be used by implementers of general M4D projects, as well as mWASH projects (author abstract).
Read a Pacific Institute press release about the report.
The report’s publishers, the Pacific Institute and Nexleaf Analytics, are using the findings for their project to build the open-source WASH SMS System. This system, which they are piloting in Indonesia, uses mobile phones and email to develop crowd-sourced map data to improve water and sanitation services for the urban poor.
Hutchings, M.T. et al., 2012. mWASH: mobile phone applications for the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector. Oakland, CA, USA: Pacific Institute and Los Angeles, CA, USA: Nexleaf Analytics. 114 p. : 12 fig., 4 tab. 95 ref. Available at: <http://www.pacinst.org/reports/mwash/full_report.pdf> [Accessed 18 May 2012]
Da Silva Wells, C. et al., 2011. Documenting change : an introduction to process documentation. (Occasional paper series / IRC; 47). The Hague, The Netherlands: IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. 41 p.; 1 fig.; 7 tab.; 7 boxes. With a list of resources, toolkits and references on p. 34 – 37.
Available at: <http://www.irc.nl/page/67642> [Accessed 13 December 2011].
Documenting change is a vitally important activity for learning from and improving upon the work carried out in development initiatives. While collecting information and analysing key activities and outcomes of a project do provide initial insights, documenting how a change process unfolds (and not just their outcomes) can provide strong (and new) insights for practice and learning. This is achieved by highlighting factors that lead to an initiative’s outcomes.
In this Occasional Paper, IRC consolidates lessons learned across a range of IRC projects and describes the resultant and emerging understanding of how process documentation can promote learning and action through joint reflection and analysis. This Occasional Paper also offers tools for collecting and presenting observations that stimulate reflection, learning and sharing.
The lessons, concepts and tools presented in this paper are relevant for project designers, managers and field staff members involved in conducting monitoring and communications tasks. This paper may also be of interest for donors as it provides an example of enhanced forms of documentation that enables more effective monitoring, evaluation and sharing of lessons.
Introductory Guide to Sanitation Marketing, 2011.
Print and Online Toolkit, by Jacqueline Devine and Craig Kullmann, Water and Sanitation Program.
Download Full-text (pdf) and view Online Toolkit
Sanitation marketing is an emerging field with a relatively small group of practitioners who are learning by doing. With an Introductory Guide to Sanitation Marketing and a companion online toolkit the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) seeks to contribute to the field by sharing practical guidance on the design, implementation, and monitoring of rural sanitation marketing programs at scale in India, Indonesia, and Tanzania, plus additional projects implemented in Cambodia and Peru.
The online toolkit includes narrated overviews, videos, and downloadable documents including research reports, sample questionnaires, and more.
Sanitation marketing, together with Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and behaviour change are the three core components WSP’s approach to scaling up rural sanitation, which also includes strengthening the enabling environment.
The World Bank Water Wikipedia writing contest is an effort by the World Bank to engage with Universities for its Wikipedia Pilot Project. The competition is open to students currently enrolled at participating universities worldwide. First place contestants will be offered invitations for a week-long paid mission trip with The World Bank.
The World Bank is now entering the final months of its second Wikipedia writing contest and submitted articles are starting to come in. Please share this post and attached forms in other sites, blogs, newsletters, message boards, list servs, etc. Contest winners will be notified on July 15th and invited to join a World Bank team for a week-long working mission trip.
Registration deadline: Friday, May 13th
Submission of work deadline: Friday, June 17th
Winners to be notified: Friday, July 15th
Please find attached both the original announcement and registration/guidelines forms. You can also visit our website for more information.
Questions or comments should be directed to:
Wikipedia writing competition guidelines and rules 2nd contest
Posted in Capacity development, Information and communication, Social media
Tagged Contests, Wikipedia, World Bank
The h2.0 Monitoring Service to Inform and Empower Initiative is testing innovations in water and sanitation services monitoring, with special attention to providing public access to visual information through Google Earth. The h2.0 map viewer currently visualises datasets from Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.
The h2.0 consortium consists of the following organisations:
Google.org, UN-HABITAT, GTZ, The University of Twente and WaterAid
Pilots are being implemented in collaboration with the Water Services Trust Fund of Kenya, the Zanzibar Water Authority, the Association of NGOs of Zanzibar, the National Bureau of Statistics of Tanzania, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, the Action for Development Society, the Africa Leadership Institute, Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company, Athi Water Services Board and Pamoja Trust.
The h2.0 platform was launched on 8 September 2010, during Stockholm World Water Week.
Web site: www.h20initiative.org
Parry, J. Kathy Shordt, K., Cousineau, D. and Wicken, J. (eds) (2010). Sharing experiences : effective hygiene promotion in South-East Asia and the Pacific. Mitcham, Vic,. Australia, Water Aid Austrakia ; Brisbane, Qld, Australia, International WaterCentre (IWC) ; The Hague, The Netherlands, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. 74 p. : boxes, fig. photogr., tab. ISBN 978-1-921499-03-6. Download document in full and by chapter.
This publication searches for answers to the question: What makes hygiene promotion work? The search is guided by two keynote papers and 11 project case studies. Each of the case studies examines hygiene promotion from its own perspective, ranging from large national campaigns to remote island communities. The majority of case studies describe experiences in the Pacific and South-East Asia, while a few highlight different approaches and issues from other regions. The case studies are grouped according to the three main
approaches to hygiene promotion: community-based approaches, campaign approaches and a school focus. Key learnings from the 11 case studies are presented using the FOAMS model for behaviour change:
F: Focus practices and focus groups;
O: Opportunities to practice the behaviour
A: Ability to practice
M: Motivation to practice
S: Sustained behaviour change
Listen below to the key lessons from the book
The Water Point Mapper is a free tool developed by WaterAid for producing maps showing the status of water supply services. It is aimed at water, sanitation, hygiene practitioners as well as local governments working at the district and sub-district levels in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Mapper has been designed for use in situations where there is no internet connectivity.
Water Point Mapper can be used to display district or village level coverage including system functionality, as well as access levels, financing and planning needs, water quality, and project and programme performance
data.
Based on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, it instantly converts water point data into Google Earth compatible maps. Google Earth can be run locally in the field on a machine completely offline. The maps can be saved as images which can be easily shared.
WaterAid says the Mapper can be used with very minimal training by local staff to generate water point maps and perform analyses that would have formerly involved complex software. The tool can help to establish low-cost data updating mechanisms which can feed into national level water point inventories.
The Mapper uses a small number of core parameters to produce maps. Additional maps can be generated using non-essential parameters. Parameter names are customisable by the user. The Mapper has point and shape data handling capability so trends can be aggregated and presented at local-authority administrative level.
It is designed to work using Windows XP, 98, Vista, running Excel 2003 or 97. It will run in Excel 2007 but should not be saved as an Excel 2007 entity or it will stop working. It uses the Google Earth application to visualise data. Once Google Earth has been installed, it can be run offline. It does not require an internet connection to generate maps. Detailed base maps can be cached in Google Earth when an internet connection is present. These can be used offline later.
John Butterworth of the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre has tested a beta-version of Water Point Mapper in Ethiopia. He used it in a training workshop on “Using WASH Information” for Woreda-level (district-level) staff in the RiPPLE programme. Normally Woreda-level staff submit WASH data to national level bodies, but do not use the data themselves. By visualising the data in maps, it can really help local staff in planning, implementing and monitoring water services. John was impressed with Water Point Mapper and is considering using the tool to map the use of traditional wells in the RiPPLE programme.
For more information on mapping see MacDonald, A., Dochartaigh, B.O., & Welle, K. 2009. Mapping for water supply and sanitation (WSS) in Ethiopia. RiPPLE working paper 11, Addis Ababa. Download full paper,
Sample map on Water Point Revenue Collection (click to enlarge)
Posted in Africa, Information and communication, Software, Water supply, Web sites
Tagged mapping, RiPPLE, Water Point Mapper, water point mapping, WaterAid
USAID Global Development Alliance. (2010). Safe Drinking Water Alliance : experiences in Haiti, Ethiopia, and Pakistan : lessons for future water treatment programs. Baltimore, Maryland USA, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University. 75 p.
Full-text (pdf, 1.51MB).
To address some of the challenges created by lack of access to safe water, in 2004, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Global Development Alliance (GDA) brought together Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP), Population Services International (PSI), CARE USA, and Procter & Gamble (P&G) to create the Safe Drinking Water Alliance (SDWA). The general goal of the Alliance was to test three marketing models to increase demand for water treatment and to identify the potential of P&G’s PUR in each model as an alternative POU technology. PUR is a household-based water treatment product that combines disinfection with removal of dirt and other pollutants and transforms turbid contaminated water into clear, potable water. The three models tested by the SWDA included:
(1) a commercial marketing model with full cost recovery in Pakistan;
(2) a social marketing model where some promotional costs were subsidized in Haiti; and
(3) an emergency relief model in Ethiopia.
In Pakistan and Haiti a combination of behavior change communication activities and PUR-branded messages and materials were disseminated to increase the demand for water treatment and to introduce PUR. In both countries, CCP led the behavior change campaigns, while in Haiti PSI handled the specific promotion and distribution of PUR. In Pakistan, P&G focused on creating demand for PUR. In Ethiopia, CARE staff working in the Community-Based Therapeutic program were fully in charge of introducing PUR and providing the motivation and information for its use.
In all three contexts SDWA partners also studied barriers and facilitators to sustained water treatment behaviors, as well as reactions to and use of PUR specifically. Findings have clear programmatic relevance, and add to the emerging literature on water treatment behavior and the adoption of new technologies, and particularly provide insights about feasible directions for PUR.
