Decolonising the WASH sector

Being true to #BlackLivesMatter. Report of an IRC Global Talk

Gay Village, Montreal. Credit: Martin Reisch/Unsplash

“The problem isn’t men, it’s patriarchy.
The problem isn’t white people, it’s white supremacy.
The problem isn’t straight people, it’s homophobia.
Recognize systems of oppression before letting individual defensiveness paralyze you from dismantling them”. (Ruchika Tulshyan, founder of inclusion strategy firm Candour)

This is not a quote you would expect to hear from an opening speaker in your usual WASH sector webinar, but the title of the IRC Global Talk on 16 July was anything but usual: “Decolonising WASH sector knowledge and decolonising systems thinking”.

On 18 June 2020, IRC posted a message from our CEO on Black Lives Matter with a commitment to the global struggle against racism. For this Global Talk, we found two, young undaunted voices to help IRC kickstart discussions on our commitments to #BlackLivesMatter. We asked them to elaborate on their recent provocative think pieces on decolonisation. First up was Euphresia Luseka, a WASH Governance Consultant from Kenya who wrote “Initiating De-colonization of WASH Sector Knowledge”, followed by the UK-based writer/facilitator and historian, Alara Adali who believes in “Decolonising systems thinking” for social change.

Waste-to-Value Sanitation in Kakuma Refugee Camp

Market-based solutions are increasingly seen as having an important role in filling gaps in public services provision and bring increased efficiency to humanitarian assistance. UNHCR partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to investigate waste-to-value sanitation solutions for areas with difficult ground conditions in protracted refugee camp settings in East Africa. In response to a call for sanitation solutions for difficult ground conditions in refugee settings, Sanivation introduced an innovative market-based solution with a waste-to-value component to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya.

This report examines the business model and financial model that Sanivation developed during the project and illustrates some of the real world challenges and opportunities for waste-to-value sanitation. It is hoped that the insights from this research will provide a useful reference for potential investors and entrepreneurs, as well as humanitarian practitioners looking to design self-sustaining waste-to-value sanitation services in refugee and low-resource settings in the future.

Download the full report.

 

Building partnerships for change – WSUP

Building partnerships for change. WSUP, April 2019.

Our Chair, Lord Paul Boateng, recently visited Nairobi where he highlights the challenges caused by poor access to clean water and safe sanitation.

Key to addressing this challenge is partnerships – at the local and national level – including city authorities tasked with delivering city-wide services, and community leaders who are a vital link between low-income residents and utilities.

Watch the video here:

eSOS Toilet: An Answer To Kenya’s Sanitation Challenge

eSOS Toilet: An Answer To Kenya’s Sanitation Challenge. Interesting Engineering, January 3, 2018.

The smart sanitation solution provides the basic hygiene to those who need it the most.

In the time of emergencies or following a natural disaster, the availability of proper sanitation facilities is always a concern. Undeniably, poor sanitation can often kill as many people as the disaster itself.

This becomes a critical issue, particularly in the temporary camps during the recovery process. Temporary toilet facilities are also responsible for pathogens spreading through a high groundwater table or flooding.

To improve this situation, IHE Delft, the world’s largest international graduate water education facility located in the Netherlands, has developed an emergency Sanitation Operation System (eSOS).

It is a holistic, sustainable and affordable sanitation solution for countries like Kenya, where open defecation is still in practice and also during the aftermath of a disaster.

As a matter of fact, eSOS toilet had a successful test run in the Philippines and its second prototype will soon be tested in Nairobi, Kenya.

What is eSOS? Let’s Take A Deeper Look

Reinventing emergency toilet and treatment facilities, eSOS uses information and communication technology (ICT) to cut down the expenditure of the entire sanitation management chain.

These new and innovative toilet systems can enhance the life quality of the people in proper sanitation need and also reduces the health risks.

Read the complete article.

Development and Application of Novel Caregiver Hygiene Behavior Measures Relating to Food Preparation, Handwashing, and Play Environments in Rural Kenya

Development and Application of Novel Caregiver Hygiene Behavior Measures Relating to Food Preparation, Handwashing, and Play Environments in Rural Kenya. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15(9), 1994; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15091994

Exposure to fecal pathogens results in both acute and chronic sequalae in young children. Diarrhea causes nearly 20% of all under-five mortality, while even sub-clinical enteric infections may lead to growth shortfalls. Stunting affects nearly 165 million children globally and results in lifelong and intergenerational effects for the world’s poorest populations. 

Caregiver hygiene behaviors, such as those surrounding handwashing and food preparation, play a critical role in exposure to fecal pathogens; standard metrics to assess these behaviors are warranted to provide a means of quantifying the impact these behaviors have on enteric infections and to evaluate the success or failure of interventions and programs.

This paper documents the development of three novel caregiver hygiene behavior measures: hygienic food preparation and storage, handwashing at key times, and provision of a safe play environment for children under two years.

We developed these measures using formative qualitative work, survey creation and deployment theoretically underpinned by the COM-B model of behavior change, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.

The final measure for hygienic food preparation and storage includes 10 items across two factors; the final measure for handwashing at key times includes 15 items across three factors; and the final measure for safe play environment contains 13 items across three factors.

Future researchers may employ these measures to assess caregiver behaviors in other populations, identify specific behavioral dimensions that should be the focus of interventions, and evaluate interventions and programs

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.

The Period Movement: Meet the Men Fighting to Stop Menstruation-Shaming

The Period Movement: Meet the Men Fighting to Stop Menstruation-Shaming. Newsweek, July 12, 2017.

Ganga Gautam stood at the back of a high school classroom in Kathmandu, Nepal, helplessly watching as a teenage girl started bleeding. Gautam, a professor of English education at Tribhuvan University, was observing one of his students teach a class two years ago.

Joshua Omanya, center, is an educator with The Cup program who teaches boys in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, about menstruation and gender equality.

Three girls were sitting on a bench next to him, and one of them was clearly in distress.“I noticed that she was menstruating. The blood was coming,” he says. “She wasn’t prepared. She didn’t have a pad, and there was a male teacher teaching.”

Gautam saw the young girl open her pen and drip ink over the blood in an effort to hide it. As soon as class ended, she placed a piece of paper over the red stain and ran out. He never saw her in school again. “That happened many times,” he says. “I saw so many girls bleeding in classrooms and panicking.

They leave the classroom and never come back. That just killed me.”Around the world, girls and women miss classes, drop out of school and fail to reach their full potential because of a natural biological process: menstruation.

Read the complete article.

Kenya is promising free sanitary napkins to help keep girls in school

Kenya is promising free sanitary napkins to help keep girls in school. Quartz, June 2017.

Kenya’s president has promised to give all school girls free sanitary napkins. Less than two months before Kenyans go to the polls, president Uhuru Kenyatta signed the Basic Education Amendment Act which compels the government to provide “free, sufficient and quality sanitary towels to every girl child registered and enrolled in a public basic education institution.”

School for everyone. (Reuters/Thomas Mukoya)

One in 10 girls on the continent misses school during her period, according the United Nations education agency. In Kenya, one of the biggest obstacles for girls attending schools is a lack of sanitary napkins, often too expensive for families to afford. Kenya’s ministry of education estimates that girls who stay home while they are menstruating lose six weeks of schooling a year.

Read the complete article.

USAID Kenya Integrated Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Project (KIWASH)

USAID Kenya Integrated Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Project (KIWASH)

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KIWASH aims to enable more than one million Kenyans across 9 counties to gain access to improved WASH services & increase access to irrigation & nutrition. 

We are working with Geodesic Water Company in Kamulu, Nairobi County to increase household connections and access to water services, and improve reliability of water supply for more people.

Find out what KIWASH is doing to promote commercial lending to the Kenyan water sector.

Trading in trash: Nairobi’s e-waste entrepreneurs – in pictures

Trading in trash: Nairobi’s e-waste entrepreneurs – in pictures. The Guardian, February 1, 2017.

From small-scale traders to a company processing hundreds of tonnes of e-waste, we explore Nairobi’s relationship with a burgeoning waste stream and visit the people turning it into a resource. Photographs and words by Nathan Siegel.  

John Obanda, who owns a repair shop, fixes a broken motherboard. Obanda sources items from collectors who work in nearby landfill sites and is one of thousands of traders who buy and recycle discarded electrical and electronic goods in Nairobi.

E-waste has ballooned in the city in the past decade due to rising mobile phone penetration and a burgeoning middle class.

Read the complete article.