Features
Editor’s note
I am happy to be back refreshed after seven month’s sabbatical leave. I spent part of the time in Bangladesh and the remainder of the time in South Africa.
Strong women of sanitation committee fight to extend services
The sanitation committee in Masuthle II is made up of four strong women. They started work in 1999 at the request of the chief of this South African village, in the North West Province, 25 minutes drive from Mafikeng.
Learning alliances help countries to face reality and to scale up success
Countries seeking ways to scale up the provision of water and sanitation services for millions of people would do better to absorb real-life lessons from their own successes and failures, rather than searching for ‘silver bullet’ solutions.
But can they also contribute to achieving the MDGs?
The Delft symposium was itself a learning experience – an opportunity to hear country experiences and to define problems and solutions– and there was no final declaration. But the panel debate that closed the symposium found a degree of consensus that learning alliances could contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
West Africa: the lessons are for everyone
Learning Alliances in West Africa need to put themselves on the agenda of every actor in the water and sanitation sector. To achieve this, consistent attention must be paid to every lesson and phase in the implementation process, and financial mechanisms must be adapted.
Are we making progress or are we moving back?
One of the problems in making progress towards sustainable development is the difficulty that societies have in incorporating into mainstream services new developments based on research and experience. For instance, it took Colombia 10 years to start considering multi stage filtration as an adequate option for water supply projects and for projects developed by national institutions.
Learning Alliances symposium: approach and tools will be used
Various people at the Learning Alliances symposium shared that they were going to apply the learning approach and tools they learned about in their work immediately.
Coca-Cola half full or half empty? Two versions of reality in India
Globalisation, friend or foe? The ideological battle lines are drawn sharply in the Southern India state of Kerala in a long running dispute over who should control precious groundwater resources.
Using sanitation to promote local economic development in Ozwathini, KwaZulu-Natal
So far Ndlovu and 19 builders have constructed 800 toilets in this village in the beautiful sugarcane belt of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Mvula: nurturing space and stepping stone
On 19 April 2005 we visit a sanitation project in Ozwathini, 74 kms out of Pietermaritzburg. The visit brings us into contact with three young women who have benefited from the important role that The Mvula Trust is playing in career development in the water and sanitation sector.
Kakaze shows the way to developing the second economy
Fuzile (Isaac) Kakaze is working on a beautiful and surprisingly big vegetable garden run by six young adults in Xhokonxa Village in the Alfred Nzo District Municipality (Eastern Cape), South Africa. They deliver vegetables to the super market in the nearby town.
IRC News
IRC director chairs NWP-NGO platform
IRC's director, Mr. Paul van Koppen has on 10 June 2005 been appointed as new chair of the NGO-NWP platform in the Netherlands.
WaterLinks - Collaboration IRC-Simavi-A4A
Three Ducth organisations have formalised cooperattion in a Memorandum of Understanding under the name WaterLinks
Monitoring the ‘Millennium Development Goals for Water and Sanitation’ translated into Spanish
The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) Latin America and the Caribbean translated the publication ‘Monitoring the Millennium Development Goals for Water and Sanitation’ into Spanish.
IRC coordinated Waterlines special on school sanitation
IRC coordinated the special issue of Waterlines issue Vol.23 No3 January 2005 on school sanitation and hygiene education (SSHE). It contained five articles which show that the success of a school hygiene programme is determined not only by the number of latrines constructed, the number of handpumps installed or water connections built.
