A bit short of a miracle …

A bit short of a miracle …

By Patrick Moriarty and John Sauer What is it that IADB’s Max Valasquez Matute in Honduras finds ‘only a bit short of a miracle’?  The decision by seven INGOs to align their programming in Honduras in support of an Everyone Forever movement aimed at delivering full coverage in sustainable rural water, sanitation and hygiene services. […]

Planning for impact

Planning for impact

By Patrick Moriarty Back in June and July of 2012, Triple-S underwent a mid-term assessment (MTA) by an excellent team led by Dr. Ben Ramalingam. The MTA was a hugely useful exercise, allowing the Triple-S team and our partners to take some time out from our day to day work to reflect on how we […]

Subverting bad policy for the better

Subverting bad policy for the better

By Richard Ward, Aguaconsult The most recent Global Water Challenge (GWC) webinar hosted at http://www.sustainablewash.org gave another useful opportunity to highlight the findings of the Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA) policy and practice research that has been disseminating during this (slightly cold) first part of 2013. Adding to the ‘reality content’ of those findings were two […]

Sustainability checks, clauses and compacts – USAID and DGIS lead the way

Sustainability checks, clauses and compacts – USAID and DGIS lead the way

By Stef Smits Over the past year, there has been quite a bit of buzz in the WASH sector on the sustainability clause  that DGIS seeks to include in its contacts with implementers. The pros and cons of this have been widely debated . A key component of the clauses is to have sustainability checks […]

A visit to Gammarth, Tunisia, or what I learnt at the African Development Bank’s retreat for rural water and sanitation

A visit to Gammarth, Tunisia, or what I learnt at the African Development Bank’s retreat for rural water and sanitation

By Harold Lockwood Last week in Gammarth, Tunis the African Development Bank called a meeting, attended by about 160 sector experts and other government officials, to launch a new coordination mechanism for its flagship Rural Water Supply and  Sanitation Initiative, or RWSSI. It was an interesting couple of days and through the various presentations, discussions, […]

What’s your role in building long-term sustainable WASH services in developing countries?

What’s your role in building long-term sustainable WASH services in developing countries?

By Harold Lockwood Well, here we go again. Next week – 11th and 12th of March – there will be another gathering in Washington DC of a range of (primarily) US based Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector practitioners, experts, policy makers and funders to discuss the issue of the day: how to make services […]

Of squeaky wheels and grease – reflections of a social welfarist on the road

Of squeaky wheels and grease – reflections of a social welfarist on the road

By Harold Lockwood Recently I have been on a continent-hopping tour through a different range of meetings and events, from which I have seen a pattern emerging, or at least a series of questions in my own mind, as I carry out my work in the WASH sector at an international level.

Vida’s story

Vida’s story

In this clip, Vida Duti tells her personal story and shares the reasons why she decided to work in development.

Piloting and scaling up

Piloting and scaling up

In this interview, Vida Duti explains how Triple-S Ghana works at all levels in order to move from piloting in the three districts, to scaling-up.

Experimenting with water service delivery

Experimenting with water service delivery

By Patrick Moriarty Coming up with a convincing elevator pitch for our Sustainable Services at Scale (Triple-S) project has long been a challenge.  Which, given the complexities of the rural water sector itself, is possibly not that surprising.  Whether defining ourselves (at least in part) as a complexity informed water services development lab will help, […]

FLOWing data

FLOWing data

By Patrick Moriarty – I mentioned some cool new outputs from IRC’s Ghana programme in my previous post.  These factsheets  present a rich picture of water services and their governance based on a total survey in our three Triple-S  focus districts in Ghana. The fact sheets aren’t cool due to their content – which is actually […]

Allocation of funds for district level WASH programmes: What is the ideal formula?

Allocation of funds for district level WASH programmes: What is the ideal formula?

By Lydia Mirembe and Deirdre Casella in Lira, Uganda  - What started off as a commonplace lecture-like meeting in the Lira District Council Hall, ended up in a spirited discussion about a variety of issues around the delivery of water services in a decentralisation framework. Conditional grants for water and sanitation; mobile phones for water; […]

Monitoring, learning and adaptation – important lessons from Uganda for development partners

Monitoring, learning and adaptation – important lessons from Uganda for development partners

By Harold Lockwood  -   Yesterday I read an excellent report on how the water sector in Uganda has managed to build a truly national monitoring system. The report is written by the Rural Water Supply Network – RWSN – and so naturally focuses on the rural sector as it looks back at the detailed steps […]

Hitting the right note – the DGIS sustainability clause IS complex – but that’s no excuse for being timid

Hitting the right note – the DGIS sustainability clause IS complex – but that’s no excuse for being timid

By Patrick Moriarty  -   It’s always difficult call these things, but I think (and hope) that the last couple of weeks may, in retrospect, come to be seen as a watershed on the long and painful road to achieving universal access to water and sanitation services worthy of the name. The potential game changer is […]

Team GB puts ‘sports policy’ into practice, but can DfID ‘team WASH’ do the same?

Team GB puts ‘sports policy’ into practice, but can DfID ‘team WASH’ do the same?

By Harold Lockwood We all know how successful team GB was at the London Olympics with 29 golds and 65 medals overall (London medals). This was a fantastic achievement and the result of years of preparation and putting into practice a comprehensive sports policy for the UK. It wasn’t just investment in the athlete or […]