Reblogged from WASH news Africa: Liberia will need to bridge a US$ 450 million funding gap to achieve the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) targets that it set for itself in 2017. Liberia unveiled a five-year US$ 600 million investment plan to rebuild its WASH sector on 7 February 2013. The sector is still recovering […]

Reblogged from WASH news Latin America and Caribbean: A Dutch-funded project aims to bring piped drinking water to peri-urban neighbourhoods of the Bolivian capital La Paz. What will determine its success? Is it the inhabitants’ willingness and ability to pay for improved water services? No, the biggest threat to the sustainability of the project is […]

Reblogged from Sanitation Updates: The African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) has been awarded a US$ 2 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help countries build capacities for sanitation policy development, monitoring and advocacy. AMCOW will use the 3-year grant for: technical guidance and training to four fragile counties to develop and […]

Reblogged from Sanitation Updates: Sustaining sanitation is much more expensive than building latrines. The 20-year cost of sustaining a basic level sanitation service per person in certain countries is anywhere from 5-20 times the cost per person of building the latrine in the first place. This is one of the key findings on costing sustainable sanitation […]

Reblogged from Sanitation Updates: A narrow majority of participants in an e-debate did not think that external funding for WASH in Schools undermines national and local commitment. From 1 – 12 October 2012, 15 participants discussed the issue of external funding in the second of three e-debates inspired by questions asked during the implementation of […]

Reblogged from Sanitation Updates: Market-driven models for sanitation in low-income areas are of unquestionable importance, but there is broad consensus that the market needs to be supported by some sort of public revenue stream. One approach to revenue generation is to include a sanitation surcharge within water bills. This Discussion Paper is a situation review […]

Reblogged from WASH News International: One of the most quoted WASH statistics was recently “downgraded”. For every $1 invested in water and sanitation, not $8 but “only” $4 is returned in economic returns through increased productivity. This recalculation [1], says the World Health Organization, is mainly a result of higher investment cost estimates and the […]

Reblogged from Sanitation Updates: The Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is inviting innovators to send letters of inquiry for round 3 of the Reinvent The Toilet Challenge. Successful applicants will receive grants to design, prototype and test on-site, self-contained sanitation modules for individual families or neighbourhoods. Self-contained means no […]

Reblogged from Sanitation Updates: You are invited to join the second in a series of three e-debates on WASH in Schools, inspired by lessons from the SWASH+ Project. It will take place from 1-5 October on  ircwash.createdebate.com The key question that we are raising in this e-debate is:  When NGOs, donors and other stakeholders fund […]

Financing water and sanitation improvements for the very poor remains a major challenge over large areas of the globe. IRC and WSUP show that effective solutions to this challenge do exist. See discussion paper: Financing water and sanitation for the poor: six key solutions. Which of the following six key solutions do you think has […]