The JMP Post-2015 indicators on WASH in schools are a step in the right direction

The JMP Post-2015 Working Groups have proposed targets and indicators for WASH in schools to be included in future global monitoring of water, sanitation and hygiene. Have they got it right or should they start again from scratch? Overall, most participants in an e-debate on this topic think that they did get it right, but that the indicators still needed refining to make them really useful and easy to monitor.

Asia Regional Sanitation and Hygiene Practitioners Workshop – call for abstracts

From 31^st January to 2^nd  February 2012 BRAC, WaterAid, WSSCC and IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre will organise a regional sanitation and hygiene practitioners’ workshop in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The aim of this workshop is to contribute to the evidence base on sanitation and hygiene interventions with sustainable results through documentation and analysis of selected cases. It is set up to support practitioners in identifying practical approaches, steps and lessons for improving their work and to provide an informal setting where participants actively engage and feel confident to question each other and their own assumptions.

The themes for this regional practitioners’ workshop are

1. Sustainable sanitation services and sustained behaviour change
2. Equity – reaching the poor and vulnerable
3. Effective monitoring for change and improved planning

Please read the announcement and call for abstracts and send your abstract to dhaka2012@irc.nl by the 14^th of August 2011.

This is the third in a series of (South) Asia regional practitioners’ workshops. For documentation related to the previous workshops, see IRC’s website: www.irc.nl/page/39978

A new publication brings together lessons from 8 regional sanitation  and hygiene workshops held between 2007 and 2011 and can be downloaded here: www.irc.nl/page/65234

Lessons learnt from sanitation and hygiene practitioners’ workshops: 2007-2011

What works in hygiene and sanitation programming and what does not? Why, with so many good experiences and advances, are basic needs and challenges not met? What are our future priorities?

These questions were addressed in eight regional practitioners’ workshops, held in four continents, where approximately 250 professionals shared their experience and research findings on sanitation and hygiene promotion between the period of 2007 and 2011. With over 100 papers delivered and deliberated upon, discussion in the workshops provided remarkable insight into hygiene and sanitation in WASH programming worldwide.

Of the eight regional workshops, seven were organised by the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre with its partners. WaterAid Australia organised a hygiene practitioners’ workshop in Melbourne, which was attended by IRC. This report highlights the commonalities and innovative thinking arising from the deliberations in all eight workshops. It underscores the urgent need to prioritise sanitation and hygiene in WASH programmes and details key intervention strategies that are helpful in improving governance and enhancing, for example, urban/rural programming, financing, and monitoring.

Download the full report (11 p., IRC, 2011)

See an overview of the eight regional workshops and a report (Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion for the Urban Poor) of the most recent workshop held in Kigali, Rwanda, in March 2011.

See also Promoting good hygiene practices, a 2011 compilation of 31 case studies on hygiene promotion presented at the regional workshops.

WASH in Schools Monitoring Package

UNICEF has published the WASH in Schools Monitoring Package to strengthen national monitoring systems and to improve the quality of monitoring at the project level.

National monitoring systems for WASH in schools are generally weak; many countries do not have even basic data on the WASH situation in schools. This lack of information on the status of WASH in schools hampers planning and resource allocation decisions. It also has an impact on the development and monitoring of WASH in Schools projects.

The package consists of three modules:

The EMIS module: a set of basic monitoring questions on WASH in Schools to be incorporated into national Education Monitoring Information Systems (EMIS), usually administered annually;

The survey module: a more comprehensive set of questions, observations and focus group discussion guidelines for use in national WASH in Schools surveys as well as for sub-national, project level or thematic surveys;

The children’s monitoring module: a teacher’s guide and tool set for the monitoring of WASH in Schools by students, including observation checklists, survey questions and special monitoring exercises.

Download the full document (88 p.)

Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All: Performance monitoring instruction sheet

This document summarises the performance monitoring framework for the AusAID and The Netherlands Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS) funded “Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for ALL” programme implemented by SNV, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and local partners in Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam. The performance monitoring framework for rural sanitation and hygiene was developed jointly by SNV and IRC, with a large number of inputs from different partners and colleagues from the countries.

The monitoring framework is based on the Qualitative Information System (QIS) developed by IRC together with Pragmatix India.

Read the full Performance monitoring instruction sheet

Monitoring the Sanitation Status of African Cities

A discussion workshop entitled “Monitoring the Sanitation Status of African Cities”, supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), was held at the University of Surrey (UK) on 29th June 2010, to discuss the accuracy of current estimates of sanitation status in African cities, and how monitoring procedures might be improved. Participants also discussed related issues of knowledge sharing within and between African cities.

Key conclusions were as follows:

1) Research is needed to identify improved metrics of urban sanitation quality, notably metrics that take into account the effectiveness of downstream systems (sewerage or faecal sludge management systems) for reducing disease burden.

2) The JMP might wish to consider the possibility of modifying its procedures for assessment of urban sanitation status, with the aim of adopting indicator sets that more accurately evaluate the effectiveness of the whole sanitation chain.

3) Knowledge-sharing initiatives like SWITCH Accra, in which a hub is created to collate and disseminate city-level watsan information resources, are very promising, and should be encouraged.

4) Drawing on the experience of the Indian Cities Sanitation Rating Scheme recently introduced by the Government of India, an analogous African Cities Sanitation Rating Scheme or schemes may be of value for stimulating urban sanitation progress.

For further information:

http://iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AfricanCities/

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See also: Sanitation Status of African Cities

This is a fully editable open-access reference resource on the sanitation status of African cities. It currently covers all 40 agglomerations in sub-Saharan Africa with a population of 1 million or more. Individuals and organizations with expert knowledge of specific cities are invited to edit and expand this resource as appropriate, so that it can evolve into a valuable knowledge-sharing resource. [This material is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, so can be freely distributed and re-used in any way.]


Reaching the MDG target for sanitation in Africa : a call for realism

An exclusive focus on reaching the MDG sanitation targets in Africa will have a “detrimental effect on the sustainability of the established infrastructure and may leave out the most important components of sanitation programs i.e. the motivation to use sanitary facilities and the need to change personal hygiene practices to improve health status”. This one of the conclusions of a new policy brief published by Danida.

The brief added that “the best use of public resources in the sanitation sector is likely to focus on building demand for sanitation, establishing clear policies on subsidies, building capacity among local government entities to enable coordination and monitoring of progress and quality of service, facilitating the creation of a commercially viable private sanitation service, allocating financial resources to essential large scale sanitation infrastructure and supporting educational institutions to produce a new generation of professionals in the sanitation sector. Once the financial regime for these long term elements has been worked out, additional funding can be earmarked or sought for specific short term interventions, including hardware subsidies based on micro-credit schemes or subsidised hardware sold through commercial outlets”.

Konradsen, F., Bjerre, J. and Evans, B. (2010). Reaching the MDG target for sanitation in Africa : a call for realism. Copenhagen, Denmark, Danida, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 50 p.
ISBN: 978-87-7087-299-7 (print version)
ISBN: 978-87-7087-300-0 (internet version)
Download PDF

This leaflet contains a set of Good Practice Notes on challenges in connection with provision of sanitation services from the perspective of international development assistance. It contains a synthesis paper:

• Reaching the MDG Target for Sanitation in Africa – A Call for Realism

and four issue papers:

• Building political commitment for sanitation in a fragmented institutional landscape
• Hooked on sanitation subsidies
• Challenges in supporting hygiene behavior change
• Measuring progress in sanitation

Indonesia, East Java: monitoring total sanitation progress via SMS

In October 2009 the Total Sanitation and Sanitation Marketing (TSSM) project piloted a short message service (SMS)-based sanitation monitoring system in East Java, Indonesia.

By using the system to improve the flow of information about the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) triggering process from the community- to the district level, Indonesians will also be able to improve monitoring results of the CLTS program.

Each designated health officer or sanitarian periodically sends text messages comprising the baseline and progress data – such as the number of households with newly constructed latrines – to an SMS gateway or server, which automatically updates the TSSM progress monitoring instrument.

So far the trial has been successful in that the conversion of SMSs into the digital monitoring format worked well without errors, updates have been in real-time without the need for data entry or editing, and the system has been stable and compatible with any computer system.

Outputs from the trial [were to] be shared with all sanitarians in the TSSM project at a meeting in November 2009. The system is expected to be replicated by the entire 29 districts in the province. TSSM aims to help 1.4 million additional people in all districts of East Java gain effective access to improved sanitation.

Contact: Jan-Willem Rosenboom, Water and Sanitation Program, East Asia and the Pacific Regional Office (WSP-EAP), Indonesia, e-mail: wspeap [at] worldbank.org

Source: WSP Access, Dec 2009

New Procurement Notices for the Global Sanitation Fund in Uganda and Senegal

WSSCC’s Global Sanitation Fund has issued two new calls for tenders and expressions of interest. Below is a brief description, deadline and link for more information related to Country Programme Monitors in Uganda and Senegal.

• Call for Expression of Interest (EOI), Country Programme Monitor, Global Sanitation Fund, Uganda. Deadline date: 5 November 2009
Download the call

• Notice for Open Tender (RFP), Country Programme Monitor, Global Sanitation Fund, Senegal. Deadline date: 16 November 2009
Dowload the call

Please send enquiries about these notices to WSSCC and not to this blog.

About the Global Sanitation Fund

The purpose of WSSCC’s Global Sanitation Fund is to help large numbers of poor people to attain safe and sustainable sanitation services and adopt good hygiene practices. The Global Sanitation Fund is a single pooled fund open to contribution from any source. The money is allocated to Executing Agencies in carefully selected countries, which then grant funds to Sub-Grantees who implement the sanitation and hygiene work programmes agreed for each country. The whole system is closely monitored by WSSCC as well as in country and global audit mechanisms, of which the Country Programme Monitors are an important mechanism.

More information on the Global Sanitation Fund

India: BORDA introduces Health Impact Assessment and -Monitoring for all Community Based Sanitation Projects

BORDA and its 16 network partners in India are implementing sanitation projects including the construction of DEWATS [Decentralized Waste Water Treatment] in slums and poor peri-urban settlements for the last 8 years. Due to time and resources constraints, a systematic evaluation of the achieved impacts on the health and hygiene condition of the direct beneficiaries/users could not be done until this year.

In spring 2008, BORDA together with 5 partner organizations developed a tool allowing the evaluation of already realized impacts and an on-going health and hygiene impact monitoring.

Read more: Meike Zinn-Meinken, BORDA, 01 July 2008