Toilet Board Coalition – Open Call for Entrepreneurs!

The Toilet Accelerator works with promising sanitation businesses for a duration of 12 months through a small business-large business mentorship programme model.

Since 2016, the corporate Accelerator has supported sanitation businesses and entrepreneurs serving low-income markets to help them overcome barriers to scale in order to bridge the gap of 2.4 billion people still lacking access to sanitation.

More than toilets alone, we are supporting commercially viable businesses at every point of the Sanitation Economy, including sanitation infrastructure, service providers, collection, treatment, transformation (up cycling of toilet resources – waste), digital and preventative healthcare.

Click here for more information or email accelerator@toiletboard.org and follow this link to directly apply.

Deadline for applications: 30th April 2018!

Expanding Access to Improved Sanitation for the Poor: Insights from the Philippines

Expanding Access to Improved Sanitation for the Poor: Insights from the Philippines. International Finance Corporation, 2018.

The Philippines is home to around twenty five million of the 2.3 billion people worldwide who lack access to a basic sanitation service. Poor sanitation has enormous economic and human costs. 

The spread of water-borne diseases, for instance, results in billions of dollars in costs to the government and poor quality of life for many citizens.

IFC’s Inclusive Business team partnered with the Manila Water Foundation, which is Manila Water Company’s social responsibility arm established in 2005, to undertake a three-part study that would assess the reasons why low income urban households in the Philippines still do not have improved sanitation facilities and to test possible sanitation solutions that enable these households to improve their sanitation conditions.

The study is part of IFC’s ongoing efforts to partner with the private and public sectors to promote inclusive and sustainable growth through market based solutions for the poor and underserved.

The objectives of this study are to provide context for the sanitation conditions of low-income communities in the Philippines and to identify the opportunities and barriers to improving sanitation systems.

Why cities are starting to shun sewers

Why cities are starting to shun sewers. Ozy.com, March 4, 2018.

On the outskirts of Bangalore, India’s tech capital, an office doubles as a museum of the toilet. An exhibit in one room traces the history of sanitation, from ancient Mesopotamian sewers to Europe’s first flush toilets and the modern sewer systems built to process the waste they spurt out. 

Then, another exhibit turns to the global sanitation crisis — including a sculpture of naked babies representing the half-million children under 5 who die from diarrhea annually — and technologies to tackle it.

CDD Society, the nonprofit housing the display, wants Indians to think outside the sewer. It has built India’s first citywide fecal sludge treatment plant, which turns human excreta into compost with no electricity and no connection to an underground sewer.

Read the complete article.

Recent WASH updates from the Philippines, Bangladesh, the Middle East

USAID WASH REPORTS FROM THE DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCE CLEARINGHOUSE

• Household and Community Risk Factors and Child Well-Being in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. DHS Working Paper, February 2018.
• Middle East and North Africa Water sector evaluation: performance evaluation report. ECODIT, 2018.
• Conservation and Adaptation in Asia’s High Mountain Landscapes and Communities. WWF, February 2018.
• Final performance evaluation of the Feed the Future innovation lab for small scale irrigation, 2018.
• USAID/Burma Shae Thot final performance evaluation: evaluation report. Social Impact, February 2018.
• A toolkit for water auditors: residential sector (Philippines) – AECOM, 2017.

OPEN ACCESS REPORTS

• Expanding Access to Improved Sanitation for the Poor: Insights from the Philippines. International Finance Corporation, 2018.
• Precarious Progress: A Diagnostic of Water Supply, Sanitation, Hygiene, and Poverty in Bangladesh. World Bank, March 2018.
• Why Are So Many Water Points in Nigeria Non-Functional? : An Empirical Analysis of Contributing Factors. World Bank, March 2018.
• 2018 Global food policy report. IFPRI, 2018.

OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL ARTICLES

• Escherichia coli Contamination across Multiple Environmental Compartments (Soil, Hands, Drinking Water, and Handwashing Water) in Urban Harare: Correlations and Risk Factors. AJTMH, March 2018.
• Empowering Girls and Women through Hookworm Prevention: Editorial. AJTMH, April 2.
• Beyond the MDG water target to universal water coverage in Ghana: the key transformative shifts required. Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development | in press | 2018.

JOURNAL ARTICLES – ABSTRACT/ORDER

• A Randomized Controlled Trial to Assess the Impact of Ceramic Water Filters on Prevention of Diarrhea and Cryptosporidiosis in Infants and Young Children—Western Kenya, 2013. AJTMH, April 2.

BLOG POSTS

• Women and jobs in water. Water Blog, April 2.

BOOKS

• Building Resilience for Uncertain Water Futures. SpringerLink, 2018. Contents/Order info.

 

Jim Peters on Water Improvements in Kenya and the U.S. Government Global Water Strategy

Jim Peters on Water Improvements in Kenya and the U.S. Government Global Water Strategy. Global Waters Radio, March 29, 2018. 

Jim Peters serves as Deputy Assistant Administrator and Acting Global Water Coordinator in USAID’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment (E3).

Jim’s career with the Agency has spanned more than 20 years, and prior to his current role with USAID, he served as Deputy Mission Director for USAID/Pakistan.

In this podcast, Jim speaks with Global Waters Radio about his recent experiences in Kenya, where he saw first-hand how USAID and local partners are making improvements to the country’s water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector.

Jim also shares his thoughts on the U.S. Government’s first-ever Global Water Strategy, released in 2017, and discusses the role USAID will play in its implementation.

Listen to the podcast.

WSUP webinar: demystifying the enabling environment for urban sanitation

Demystifying the enabling environment for urban sanitation: case studies from Bangladesh, Kenya and Zambia 

Tuesday 10th April, 1pm – 2.30pm BST

Register here

WSUP is hosting a webinar to explore what an enabling environment for urban sanitation really looks like. Despite its evident importance to achieving scale, the components of a well-functioning enabling environment for urban sanitation are weakly understood.

Join us on April 10th to hear how we are working to strengthen enabling environments across WSUP locations.

Speakers:
Amirul Hasan, WSUP Business Development Lead, Dhaka (Bangladesh)
Sibongile Ndaba, WSUP Business Development Lead, Lusaka (Zambia)
Emanuel Owako, WSUP Project Manager, Kisumu (Kenya)

This webinar will share the lessons from a 5-year programme – funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – which aimed to catalyse the market for on-site sanitation services in Bangladesh, Kenya and Zambia, through the development of flexible public-private arrangements.

We will begin the session by introducing a new framework for conceptualising and evaluating the enabling environment, grounded in WSUP’s experience of implementing urban WASH programmes in six countries.

Our speakers will then share their experiences of strengthening key components of the local enabling environment – ranging from institutional mandates, regulatory effectiveness and service provider capacity to infrastructure, technology, affordability and consumer behaviour.

Participants will also be introduced to “The Bottom Line”: a new online simulation which brings to life some of the challenges faced by sanitation businesses.

Click here to register.

Menstrual Pads Can’t Fix Prejudice [feminist opinion piece]

In her opinion piece in the New York Times of 31 March 2018, Chris Bobel criticises the type of menstrual activism that has a narrow focus on “better living through more consumption” of sanitary pads. The core problem surrounding menstruation in her opinion is cultural stigma. Many NGOs and social entrepreneurs promote “a simple solution to what is, in reality, a complex problem”. What is needed, she writes, is “access to a clean, secure toilet”, to treat menstruation as something normal rather than a nuisance, and “culturally sensitive community-based education about the menstrual cycle […] not only girls, but also everyone surrounding them — boys, parents, teachers, religious leaders and health professionals”.

Read the full opinion piece in the New York Times. See also Is Bollywood’s Pad Man movie too good to be true?

Chris Bobel is an associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and past president of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research. She is the author of the forthcoming The Managed Body: Developing Girls and Menstrual Health in the Global South.