Online Course “Governance in Urban Sanitation”

The Local Development Programme of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)  announces the next session of the e-learning course Governance in Urban Sanitation, to be conducted from 23 September to 29 November 2013.

The course aims to enhance the capacity of local decision-makers and sanitation professionals to make the most enlightened decisions and investments in the area of urban sanitation. Furthermore, it provides analytical tools to understand the financial and institutional framework of the sanitation sector, taking into account the needs of urban poor communities.

The course is composed of four modules:
Module 1: Introduction to Sanitation
Module 2: Economics, Pricing and Financing of the Sanitation Sector
Module 3: Institutional Aspects of the Sanitation Sector
Module 4: Sanitation and Poverty

This online course has been awarded with the International ECBCheck Quality Label for e-learning.

The course fee is USD 600 and UNITAR stresses that it does not provide any financial assistance.

Full information about the course is available at:
www.unitar.org/event/urbansanitation2013

WEDC & WSP online learning course – Rural Sanitation at Scale

The Water Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC) of Loughborough University, UK, in partnership with the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) of the World Bank, recently developed a self-paced online course that addresses the important global challenges facing the water and sanitation sector.

The course, titled Rural Sanitation at Scale, which is featured as a unit in WEDC’s master’s (MSc) program, is also offered free-of-charge as a non-accredited professional development unit for sector professionals interested in learning more about the issues of scaling-up sanitation in rural areas.
The course is divided into three parts: 

Part 1 – Lays out the challenge of scaling up rural sanitation in context, examining fundamental aspects of sanitation provision and the reasons why, up to now, the goal of sanitation at scale has proved elusive. 

Part 2 – Examines the core theory of change for sustainable programs. In particular it looks at the first two, of three, key components or pillars required for change: the creation of demand and the supply chain.

Part 3 – Continues to explore the core theory of change, focusing on the enabling environment. The unit concludes with a discussion of how the three pillars fit together and what steps are necessary to take an at-scale program forward.

Each section takes approximately 1 hour of study time, excluding associated reading, and is delivered using a variety of media including slide presentations, film clips, animations, photography and graphics supported by selected online publications.

• Access the WEDC/WSP course directly or on the
• World Bank Water website and the 
• WSP website.

Note: You will need to allow pop-ups for the course to run.

• For more information, please contact R.J. Shaw (WEDC) or Eddy Perez (WSP)
• Read WSP’s publication What Does it Take to Scale Up Rural Sanitation? (PDF)

Dear Matt Damon,

This blog is a response to the video posted by Matt Damon, co-founder of water.org, where he announces a toilet strike to raise awareness for the water crisis.
——-

Dear Matt,

I enjoyed your video on water.org about going on a toilet strike. It is great that you are so passionate about realizing access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene for all. I personally also like it that you bring in some humor into our sometimes very boring sector.

In your video you mention that it costs US$25 to provide a person with sanitation for life. This is not true. Over the past four years IRC’s WASHCost project in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Andhra Pradesh (India) and Mozambique has collected, validated and analysed cost and service level information for water, sanitation and hygiene. Based on this research we know that for US$ 25 you can construct a traditional pit latrine with an impermeable slab which provides a basic service. In order to sustain the service provided by that traditional pit latrine it costs between US$ 1.5 and US$ 4 per person per year – so to provide sanitation for life means finding that US$ 1.5-4 every year …. for life. If you do not know how, or by whom, these recurrent costs will be financed, it is very likely that the latrine you are constructing today will break down or not used within two to three years, wasting your investment.

Moving beyond construction: Asian practitioners identify sludge management as a major issue

Learning cloud gives a glimpse of the future of WASH in Asia

Which issues will sanitation and hygiene practitioners focus on in Asia? This was the question posed to the more than 50 professionals attending the 3rd Asia Regional Sanitation and Hygiene Practitioners Workshop which ends today in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Based on the above “learning cloud”, sludge management appears to be a major concern.

Rotary partners with world’s largest postgraduate water education institution

By Arnold R. Grahl and Wayne Hearn, Rotary International News — 28 November 2011

Rotary clubs will be helping train engineers and scientists to solve problems in water and sanitation, particularly in developing countries, through a new strategic partnership between The Rotary Foundation and UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education.

Through the partnership, the Foundation will offer packaged grants that Rotary clubs may use to select and sponsor scholarships for professionals in the water sector. Up to eight students a year may be chosen for any of three master of science programs at the institute in Delft, the Netherlands.

Both the institute and Rotary share a vision of making water and sanitation more accessible and more sustainable for all people, particularly the poor. The partnership directly supports Rotary’s water and sanitation area of focus.

Viet Nam: world’s first Unilever-sponsored Toilet Academy opens in 2012

Unilever is partnering with the World Toilet Organization (WTO) to set up Domestos Toilet Academies around the world, starting with a pilot Academy in Viet Nam opening in 2012.

The Domestos Toilet Academy will run month-long training courses for local people interested in setting up their own businesses to source, sell and maintain toilets, and educate local communities on the importance of sanitation.

In Viet Nam, only half the population has ‘some sort’ of sanitation facility, and 82% do not have access to facilities that meet the hygiene standards of the country’s Ministry of Health. “Only 12% of schools actually have hygienic toilet access, with rural areas suffering the most”, said WTO founder Jack Sim.

Unilever will also be partnering with UNICEF to help promote health through improved hygiene and access to toilets, stated Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Unilever.

Domestos is the Unilever brand name for its bleach products (also sold as Domex, Glorix, Klinex).

Source: Unilever, 14 Nov 2011

Winning the race: sanitation in rapidly-growing towns in Southern Africa – workshop video report

“The number of people without access to adequate water and sanitation facilities in Africa has risen fast in recent decades [as] rapid urbanisation has outpaced the ability of many African governments to provide essential services”, writes David Schaub-Jones in the background paper for the Learning & Sharing Session “Winning the Race: Sanitation in rapidly-growing towns”.

The 2 day session, held from 10-11 November 2011 in Lusaka, Zambia, explored proactive, tangible ways to deal with pressing sanitation issues in towns experiencing rapid growth in Southern Africa. It was hosted by the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, together with UCLGA, WIN-SA and AusAid.

Read the full background paper

Read more about the Learning & Sharing Session “Winning the Race: Sanitation in rapidly-growing towns”

Inclusive WASH free learning portal

WaterAid in Australia, in collaboration with the WASH Reference Group, is  hosting five online learning sessions and a learning workshop on inclusive WASH. The first session started on 30 October 2011 and the programme will end with the learning workshop in May 2012 in Melbourne, Australia.

A recording of the first introductory webinar is now online. The second learning session on gender runs until 18 November 2011. Following sessions will be on the disabled, HIV/AIDS and chronic illness, and the poorest of the poor.

Harnessing the wisdom of crowds – Open discussion forum helps to answer many sanitation related questions

The idea for this open discussion forum on sanitation came from our experience that when you want to buy a new car or have a question about your baby’s teeth: where do you get advice from? You put your question into a search engine like Google and you end up reading other people’s postings on a discussion forum. Usually, those questions and answers prove to be very helpful.

The same mechanism can hold true for a discussion forum on sanitation issues. This is why the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) secretariat developed a new discussion forum which was launched in July 2011. The forum is open –  as opposed to some existing closed fora which require a login even just for reading. Today, the SuSanA forum already has 930 registered users, 40 topics, nearly 1000 views for the most popular topics, and some topics have attracted up to 20 replies.

All postings are readable by everyone and searchable by search engines like Google and Yahoo. A broad range of topics are covered such as sanitation systems and technologies, health and hygiene, CLTS, school sanitation, sanitation systems for special conditions, menstrual hygiene management, SuSanA working groups and announcements and many more.

All registered users can contribute to the forum by creating new discussion topics or by responding to the posts of others. The option to create a user profile, including a passport-style photo, is available. The user can also attach additional documents and photos to his or her posts.

For people who like to receive postings via e-mail, it is also possible to subscribe to a daily e-mail alert service of new posts simply by leaving your e-mail address here. Alternatively or in addition, one can subscribe to specific categories or topics after logging in and thereby follow specific discussions.

Here are four examples of very active discussion threads so far:

• Faecal sludge management;
• Mobile sanitation systems like peepoo bags in Kenya or a new urine diversion toilet pot in Bangladesh;
• Menstrual Hygiene Management, including the Ruby Cup business idea in Kenya;
• Progress of SuSanA working groups:

To view the discussion forum or to obtain your own login for writing on the forum, please click here.

For further information or questions please contact the SuSanA secretariat (susana@giz.de)

Rwanda in the fast lane, sanitation field visit confirms

Around 30 percent of the national budget of Rwanda is made available to district authorities. This high share makes Rwanda a front-runner in Africa, Stephan Klingebiel and Timo Mahn, two German banking specialists write in the June 2011 edition of Development and Cooperation, Vol. 38.2011:6. In only a few years, the country has considerably improved its public financial management. And the reform impetus started in the country itself. Donors helped to mobilise reform forces, but no one questions Rwanda’s leading role.

A similar drive can be reported on sanitation. ‘From the ruins of years of war and genocide, Rwanda has moved to improve household access to hygienic sanitation  facilities faster than in any country in Sub-Saharan Africa””, writes Nitin Jain in the July 2011 Getting Africa to meet the sanitation MDG: Lessons from Rwanda.

And from my four days in Rwanda during the AfricaSan3 Conference I can confirm this reality. I had talks with a national planner who finances district level Training of Trainers on Sanitation and Hygiene, district level officials who were trained and Community Mobilisers who trained village level Community Health Workers. I also visited and talked to the Community Hygiene Club in Rwanagala umudugudu (village) in Kazence cell, in sector Ntamara, in district Bugesera, Eastern Province, some 30 kilometres out of the capital Kigali.

Handwashing facility at road toilet, Photo IRC/Dick de Jong

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