In an interview with Pan European Networks, IRC Senior Sanitation Specialist Joep Verhagen explains how sanitation efforts need to begin to increase their focus on sustainability.
EU aid for water and sanitation hit a record €1.6bn in 2009, but in March 2012 the EU announced plans to redirect development to ‘the world’s neediest nations’ with fears that this could harm sanitation efforts in Latin America, Asia and possibly some sub-Saharan African countries. Joep Verhagen shares his thoughts on the EU plans and on how knowledge-sharing partnerships and research are helping to provide sustainable solutions to existing rural and urban sanitation problems.
In a new video, Mayadevi and Kaman (Nepal), Toan and Thinh (VietNam) and Tshering, Drukda, Tashi and Deschen (Bhutan) share stories about women’s participation, leadership and their changing roles in promoting sanitation and hygiene in Nepal, Bhutan and Viet Nam.
The video is from SNV’s Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All Programme (SSH4A), which has been implemented by local governments and partners in 17 districts across Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia since 2008. It aims to provide one million people with access to improved hygiene and sanitation facilities by the end of 2015. As the approach aims at addressing access to sanitation for all, addressing gender issues and inequalities is key.
SSH4A is a partnership between SNV, the Governments of the Netherlands, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia in Asia and the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre with support from AusAID and DFID.
In Bangladesh, IRC is supporting BRAC to measure behavioural change in the BRAC WASH II programme. Christine Sijbesma of IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and Mahjabeen Ahmed of the BRAC share their thoughts and experiences with monitoring sanitation and hygiene behaviour of women in the programme in a recent blog post [1].
The QIS monitoring system that is being used gives special attention to gender and sanitation. First because many of the indicators differentiate between women and men. Secondly because data collection for each sample is duplicated by a male and a female monitoring team. Interestingly, preliminary results show that virtually all the male and female monitoring teams members gave the same scores for the gender indicators.
[1] Bangladeshi women catch up on sanitation, IRC, 08 March 2013
“What is good about the monitoring system that we are using is that it is participatory so that respondents also get knowledge”, says Senior Sector Specialist Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Mahjabeen Ahmed of the BRAC WASH II Programme. Ms Ahmed is one of the 5,000 programme workers who are supporting BRAC WASH II in Bangladesh. From 11 to 15 March 2013 she was in The Hague, The Netherlands, for a programme workshop.
Over the last few weeks and months, people at BRAC in Bangladesh and at IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre in The Netherlands have been working really, really hard to prepare for our first Monitoring and Learning workshop that will happen at the end of February. Exciting, and frankly, a bit daunting to complete the full circle of planning, implementation, monitoring and learning, and adaptation for the BRAC WASH programme that covers half of Bangladesh and seeks to provide sustainable sanitation and hygiene services to almost 55 million people.
Innovative monitoring tools such as the Qualitative Information System (QIS), sanitation ladders and SenseMaker® are being used in a programme that seeks to provide sustainable sanitation and hygiene services to almost 55 million people in Bangladesh.
Consultant-led sanitation marketing surveys typically take months to produce a thick report with largely impractical recommendations.
The IRC International Water and Sanitation is developing a field tool that delivers, within just one week, a one-page overview matching sanitation supply and demand.
The tool, a sanitation marketing dashboard, was tested in two unions in one of the upazilas (sub-districts) covered by the BRAC WASH II programme.
Preliminary results revealed for instance that the quality of construction and hygiene promotion needed improvement.
An updated version of the tool will be used in six to nine representative upazilas in the BRAC WASH II programme.
IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre announces a renewed research call for:
Low-cost sanitation technologies for areas with high water tables
This call is part of the BRAC WASH II programme in which EUR 1.5 million will be used for innovative research, tendered to consortia of leading European and Bangladeshi research organisations.
The planned duration of the research project will be 18 months.
The anticipated cost of the project is EUR 325,000. In addition there is EUR 50,000 available for piloting. (Separate budget needs to be included for this).
The deadline for submission of full proposal application forms is: 18 February 2013.
Future research calls will focus on low-cost water supply technologies; Geo-referenced database for monitoring; menstrual hygiene management; and saline intrusion.
Please do not send requests for information or applications to the Sanitation Updates blog.
From September to November 2012, IRC hosted three e-debates around topics inspired by the SWASH+ Project, an action-research school WASH project in Kenya.
The results from the debates have infiltrated key international working groups. These include the JMP Post-2015 Working Groups, the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) and the UNICEF WASH in schools working group.
The three e-debates attracted 27 participants who submitted 31 arguments in total.
The e-debate questions were:
Are the JMP Post-2015 indicators on WASH in schools a step in the right direction?
Does external funding for WASH in Schools undermine national & local commitment?
Will local governments ever be able to meet policy obligations?
National Policy Changed by WASH in Schools Research
Date: Thursday 13 December 2012
Time: 14:30 – 15:30 CET (Central European Time)
19:00 – 20:00 New Delhi
16:30 – 17:30 Nairobi
08:30 – 09:30 New York
Presenters:
Mamita Bora Thakkar, UNICEF India
Brooks Keene and Jason Oyugi, CARE
Whether you like it or not, governments have a role to play in effective implementation of WASH in Schools programmes. This webinar will explore how national policy is influenced by the work of UNICEF in India and SWASH+ in Kenya.
Combining experiences in Kenya and India, the webinar aims to do three things:
examine how UNICEF India supports the Indian government in identifying and overcoming obstacles that prevent the achievement of sustainable WASH in Schools
explorehow the SWASH+ research helped change the national policy on school WASH in Kenya
provide insights into how best to track progress and results.
IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre announces a renewed research call for:
Faecal sludge secondary treatment technologies for challenging settings
This call is part of the BRAC WASH II programme in which EUR 1.5 million will be used for innovative research, tendered to consortia of leading European and Bangladeshi research organisations.
The planned duration of the faecal sludge research project will be 18 months.
The anticipated cost of the project is EUR 325,000. In addition there is EUR 50,000 available for piloting. (Separate budget needs to be included for this).
The deadline for submission of full proposal application forms is: 11 January 2013.
Future research calls will focus on low-cost water supply technologies; Geo-referenced database for monitoring; menstrual hygiene management; and saline intrusion.
Please do not send requests for information or applications to the Sanitation Updates blog.
Sustaining sanitation is much more expensive than building latrines. The 20-year cost of sustaining a basic level sanitation service per person in certain countries is anywhere from 5-20 times the cost per person of building the latrine in the first place.
This is one of the key findings on costing sustainable sanitation services, which are being highlighted in the first month of the WASHCost campaign. The campaign was launched on 24 October, and every month until March 2013, it brings a roundup of fast facts from the WASHCost research project, experiences from several organisations which are using the life-cycle cost approach and ways to get involved.
Dear SuSanA members and partners, This monthly e-mail informs you about the latest news from SuSanA and the SuSanA partners. This e-mail is sent to 3593 subscribers and contains the following topics: 1. Status quo analysis of SuSanA 2008 to 2012 summary now available online 2. Add your voice to the next 5 years of SuSanA 3. The 4C networking campaign 4. Vide […]
This monthly e-mail informs you about the latest news from SuSanA and the SuSanA partners. This e-mail is sent to 3681 subscribers and contains the following topics: 1. SuSanA's sixth Anniversary 2. Bill Melinda Gates Foundation grants now open for discussion on SuSanA forum. Join in! 3. The world we want! The post-2015 WASH sub-consultation 4. Make pos […]
The monthly news mail informs you about the latest news from SuSanA and the SuSanA partners. For more frequent news updates please visit our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/susana.org (http://www.facebook.com/susana.org) or check the SuSanA discussion forum http://www.forum.susana.org (http://www.forum.susana.org). This monthly e-mail informs you about […]
The monthly news mail informs you about the latest news from SuSanA and the SuSanA partners. For more frequent news updates please visit our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/susana.org (http://www.facebook.com/susana.org) or check the SuSanA discussion forum http://www.forum.susana.org (http://www.forum.susana.org). This news mail is sent to 3120 subscr […]
Today is World Toilet Day – see here and also ThePublicToilet.com. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in association with Domestos, has released this report which is well worth reading: Toilets for Health.
In the UK Daily Mail of 23 October: No toilet? Then no bride − the Indian government's bizarre new campaign to increase indoor lavatories. Well, that’s one way of promoting sanitation!
From the Gates Foundation website (dated 14 August): ‘Bill Gates Names Winners of the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge’:California Institute of Technology in the United States received the $100,000 first prize for designing a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity. Loughborough University in the United Kingdom won the $60,000 second place […]
In a letter to The Economist (28 July 2012) Tony Simons, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, writes that, to reduce hunger and promote food security in the Sahel, agroforestry is the way forward. As he notes, “Trees provide not only ecological resilience but also cash income, energy, environmental services, fodder for animals and nu […]
“The dry toilets in Inner Mongolia's Daxing eco-community have been quietly replaced after three years of bad smells, health problems and maggots.” Oops! See the full entry in the Guardian Environment Network (30 July 2012).
IRC has on its website a good photo-sequence on how to build a fossa alterna: “This photo story shows you how to construct a fossa alterna, how to empty it and how to process the compost. After 12−18 months of composting it is safe to empty a fossa alterna toilet and use the compost as fertilizer for your garden soil”. Fossas alternas? Read Peter Morgan’s To […]
What Does It Take to Scale Up Rural Sanitation? by Eduardo Perez and published earlier this month by the Water and Sanitation Program is an important document because, as the report’s webpage says, “Today, 2.5 billion people live without access to improved sanitation. … Of those without access to sanitation, 75 percent live in rural areas [emphasis added].” […]
Have a look at the John Snow Society’s 2011 Pumphandle Lecture Epidemiology for the Bottom Billion – where there’s not even a pump handle to remove! by Hans Rosling who’s a professor at the Karolinska Institute and also chairman of the Gapminder Foundation. An excellent lecture. Check out the Gapminder videos − you’ll find some pretty stunning ones!Who’s Joh […]
WHO published in May this year Global costs and benefits of drinking-water supply and sanitation interventions to reach the MDG target and universal coverage by Dr Guy Hutton. Here’s the Overview from the WHO webpage for the report:This report updates previous economic analyses conducted by the World Health Organization, using new WSS coverage rates, costs o […]
Hi All, I am a PhD student with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, currently working in South Africa with Stellenbosch University and BioCycle (see Cobus's post above). My research is concentrating on the efficiency of BSFL at consuming pit latrine waste extracted from dry latrines in South Africa. I have recently collected approximatel […]
Dear Kim Andersson, Thanks for your positive reply! Regarding your questions about the system that is introduced above, I have to inform you that this was just one of the proposals we have been working on. We're likely rejecting urine diversion as well as the technologies described for drying and water treatment. Anyway, I'll try to answer your que […]
Ok, maybe it is a bit off-topic but there is an alternative interesting take on the idea of acidic fecal sludge treatment and soil supplements with biochar: Wood "vinegar", especially bamboo "vinegar" (a potential side product of charcoal production) is a known antibacterial and antifungal substance already used for composting of pig-manu […]
Dear Ewoods Due to me changing jobs in Dec. 12, I never got around actually experimenting with this. Thus I am not sure if I can be of any help with trying out an RSB for fecal sludge disinfection. On a positive side though, I am now working in Kampala, Uganda and would be naturally very much interested in your pilots in Kenya.
Dear members, I am glad to inform you that I've download two major research on the Wash and Nutrition thematic on the Susana Library. This document should launch some discussion around the topic. - Does Village Water Supply Affect Children’s Length of Stay in a Therapeutic Feeding Program in Niger? Lessons from a Medecins Sans Frontieres Program (MSF, 2 […]
Gerwin, Why do you want the two to be separate, other than cross-contamination? I work with individuals who have an enzymatic process. I asked them their thoughts and was told: "A small amount would go far in helping with the degradation and odor. If aeration is introduced you would have metabolization and 2 by-products (water and Fertilizer) and most i […]
Dear JKM This is very interesting idea for getting a more consistent heating in the concentrator. I would be interested in talking you about further tests you have done and temperature outputs, and the possibility of testing here in Kenya along side our other concentrators. We currently have a few projects going in Kenya and are now comparing various methods […]
Hi Hemendra, have a look at this publication www2.gtz.de/dokumente/bib-2011/giz2011-0...water-wastewater.pdf there you will find usefull information. I don´t know what you mean with cana (the red plant on your picture?)and also I don´t know what you mean with reed. To many species and the terms are used often quite general. Christoph
Dear Gökce, thank you very much for your nice remarks on our project. I am afraid that we have not had time to update our homepage on the urine treatment methods, which we are working on in the RTTC project. However, they are derived from the main Vuna process: Stabilization of urine followed by evaporation of water (www.eawag.ch/vuna). We stabilize with par […]
Dear Aaron, Thank you for the posts and the updates. I also have a few questions. 1.) a family size of 10 seems large to me (based on my Asian experience, maybe for SSA this is more realistic). This brings me to the question of how well the process would cope with under-feeding. For instance if some of the children of the household get send to boarding schoo […]
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IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and the USAID WASHplus project.
In an interview with Pan European Networks, IRC Senior Sanitation Specialist Joep Verhagen explains how sanitation efforts need to begin to increase their focus on sustainability.
