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.
Menstrual hygiene is fundamental to the dignity and wellbeing of women and girls and an important part of the basic hygiene, sanitation and reproductive health services. However, menstruation is too often taboo, and has many negative cultural attitudes associated with it, including the idea that menstruating women and girls are ‘contaminated’, ‘dirty’ and ‘impure’.
This resource kit provides modules and toolkits on improving menstrual hygiene for women and girls in lower and middle-income countries. It covers key aspects of menstrual hygiene in different settings, including communities, schools and emergencies.
The resource kit brings together examples of good menstrual hygiene practice from around the world.
The nine modules and accompanying toolkits, cover the following topics:
House, S., Mahon, T. and Cavill, S., 2012. Menstrual hygiene matters : a resource for improving menstrual hygiene around the world. [online] London, UK: WaterAid. 347 p.; ill.; tab.; fig.; boxes
Available at: <http://washurl.net/5iyh2e>
Posted in Advocacy, Emergencies, Gender, Hygiene promotion, Monitoring & evaluation, Publications
Tagged menstrual hygiene, schools
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.
Tesselaar, R. et al., 2012. From infrastructure to sustainable impact : policy review of the Dutch contribution to drinking water and sanitation (1990-2011). (IOB evaluation ; no. 366). The Hague, The Netherlands, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. 132 p. : 9 fig., 12 tab. 54 ref.
Available at: <http://washurl.net/d6qgwq> [PDF 4.6 MB]
This policy review examines Dutch aid during 1990 to 2011 to improve drinking water and sanitation services in developing countries. The main focus is on the period from 2004 when aid was directed at supporting the Millennium Development Goal of halving the world’s population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.
The review is primarily based on:
Following an introduction, chapter 2 covers the problem analysis and international context. Chapter 3 describes the Dutch policy that lies at the basis of the targets for drinking water and sanitation, the responsibilities, instruments and policy execution, the budgets, monitoring and evaluation and the available information about the realisation of the contribution to the MDG target for drinking water and sanitation. Chapter 4 analyses the impact of the Netherlands-supported programmes and sustainability of results. The final chapter discusses findings that concern policy efficiency.
The main findings were:
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]
Smits, S., Dietvorst, C., Verhoeven, J. and Butterworth, J. (2011). Scanning the 2020 horizon : an analysis of trends and scenarios in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector. (Occasional paper series / IRC ; no. 45). The Hague, The Netherlands, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. 72 p. : 13 fig., 15 tab. Includes references
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What will the international Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector look like in, let us say, 10 years from now? Will access to sanitation still lag behind water supply, or will it evolve into a stand-alone sub-sector with its own set of dedicated institutions and organisations? Will aid continue to play a predominant role in investing in WASH infrastructure, or will emerging economies increase their investments in the sector? And, how will trends outside the sector, such as urbanisation or changes in food prices, affect the sector?
Scanning the 2020 horizon presents 21 trends that the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre considers most critical to WASH sector development. It examines trends both within the WASH sector, as well as those outside the sector which have the potential to impact on the sector. Many of these are updates of factors identified in a similar exercise undertaken five years ago by IRC.
In general, compared to five years ago, IRC sees little change in the main paradigms employed in the sector, the issues discussed, the stakeholders involved, or the type and level of financing. This is not surprising as reforms take time.
Based on these trends we developed four possible scenarios, representing diverging futures for the WASH sector:
Scenario 1: Two steps forward; one step back for the sector
Scenario 2: New players in a less stable environment
Scenario 3: Towards a post-aid WASH sector
Scenario 4: A multi-polar WASH sector
The document concludes with reflections on how IRC has used these trends and scenarios to inform its strategic choices and the development of its business plan 2012-2016.
Finally, IRC calls upon other sector organisations to undertake similar exercises, not only to support individual organisational development, but also to ensure a contribution to a better understanding of what will be required within and from the WASH sector as we near the 2015 MDG target date and beyond.
Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) – South Asia (2011). A decade of the total sanitation campaign : rapid assessment of processes and outcomes. New Delhi, India, Water and sanitation programme (WSP) – South Asia
Vol. 1 : main report. 80 p.; ill.; 10 boxes; 56 fig.; 7 tab.; photogr. 17 ref.
Vol. 2 : annexes. 83 p.; 37 annexes (= 37 tab.)
The Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) of the government of India has been in operation for over a decade (1999 to date), and the Nirmal Gram Puraskar, a fiscal incentive programme that rewards local governments (Green Panchayats) that achieve total sanitation, has completed five years (2005 to date). The country has made significant progress in terms of coverage and outcomes. However, these achievements have been concentrated in a few states while others continue to lag significantly behind.
This report analyses primary and secondary data on the TSC to arrive at an understanding of the processes, outputs and outcomes at a national level and across the states; this is compared with the inputs which have gone into the programme. These indicators are then compared individually and in combination to benchmark the states, to understand the relative performance of the states. This benchmarking, based on a combination of eight indicators, is undertaken for both states and districts across the country. The analysis is also useful in tracking the efficiency of the states in terms of time taken to achieve total sanitation (rate of acceleration of the programme) and the financial expenditure on achieving outcomes. It, then, extrapolates, based on current achievements, to understand when the various states would achieve the ultimate objective of full coverage. [authors abstract]
The O&M Network website is intended for water and sanitation sector professionals and other parties with responsibility for O&M practices in developing countries. Registration (free) is required to access and contribute to the website’s toolbox containing reference tools (manuals, guidelines, checklists) and case studies on the following topics:
Other resources on the web site include O&M Network workshop reports and a glossary.
Through its O&M Advisory Service, the network offers technical assistance for specific organizations working in low and middle income countries.
Founded by the World Health Organization (WHO), the O&M Network is coordinated by the National Institute of Public Health of Japan while the International Water Association (IWA) manages the secretariat.
Web site: www.operationandmaintenance.net
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
Locussol, A.; Ginneken, M. van (2010). Template for assessing the governance of public water supply and sanitation service providers. (Water working notes; no. 23). Washington, DC, USA, World Bank. iv, 31 p. : fig., tab.
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This note proposes a template for assessing the governance of urban water supply and sanitation (WSS) service providers and its impact of the quality of service and performance of operations. The template can be used for decentralized autonomous public corporations responsible for providing the WSS service to customers as well as other institutional arrangements ranging from government departments to autonomous public WSS asset holding companies subcontracting operations to professional operators. It can be used as terms of reference (TOR) for a consultant or a team of consultants assessing various WSS service providers.
This template complements the extensive work done on performance indicators through the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET). While IBNET provides an excellent framework to measure the performance of a WSS service provider, no standard appraisal methodology exists
for the governance of the WSS service provider and its environment. This template sets out to fill this gap.
The note has two main parts. Part B describes the actual template. It includes a set of questions and simple instructions on how to provide the answers. It focuses on two main governance aspects:
• Part B1 maps WSS service providers and their environment. It focuses on: (i) the accountability framework
within which WSS service providers operate; (ii) the overall policy environment; and (iii) their internal functioning.
• Part B2 reviews how the key functions of: (i) development of the WSS infrastructure; (ii) provision of the WSS service; (iii) financing of the WSS service and development of the WSS infrastructure; and (iv) economic regulation of the WSS service are performed.
The actual template is followed by a format for presenting the findings of the assessment (part C). The format includes: (i) a snapshot of the current situation; (ii) a graphic representation of the accountability framework; and (iii) a diagnosis of the apparent performance gaps to be addressed.
A list of recent papers on governance of WSS utilities is given in Annex 1, and a list of IBNET and other metric indicators in Annex 2. There are also examples of accountability frameworks, a summary assessment per topic, and a summary governance assessment in respectively annexes 3-5 respectively.
