This second article about the 35 years of joint learning by IRC and partners highlights the period 1979-1983, which saw IRC move into the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, and a frenzy of activity. Demands for IRC’s services were rising fast that the organisation needed to be put onto a more independent basis. This came on 1 January 1981 when an Act of the Dutch Parliament turned the former government agency into an independent foundation. The change was also marked by adding sanitation to our name.

Quote from IRC Newsletter no 143, May June 1983

“The two problems with pit latrines are flies, which carry disease, and odour. The ventilated improved pit latrine, better known as VIP Latrine, is an improved version which overcomes the chief disadvantages of the conventional design. The VIP latrine was developed between 1973 and 1976 by the Blair Research Laboratories at Harare, Zimbabwe….”.

The newly constituted Governing Board included, as it still does, leading sector managers from key international organisations UNICEF, WSP, WHO and WSSCC. With the Board’s advice and backing, IRC strengthened its independent role and established a unique identity as an agency that linked fieldwork with support for information and training in the water supply and sanitation sector.

Within IRC, an integrated approach to sector development was introduced. This stimulated a regular exchange of information and expertise, so that technical projects fed and were fed by multi-country programmes on manpower development and on community education and participation.

Programme on Exchange and Transfer of Information (POETRI)

During this period too, IRC developed the Programme on Exchange and Transfer of Information (POETRI) with the aim of supporting institutions in developing countries to collect, process and distribute what was called “technical information”. This proposal to develop national information centres was well received, but the initiative foundered largely through the difficulties that international support agencies had in funding such activities. Nevertheless, POETRI helped influence sector thinking on information and communication. It contributed the information component to the subsequent International Training Network (ITN) Centres established by the UNDP/World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme.

Links to today

From 1983 to the present day the Swiss SDC and UNICEF have continued to fund information sharing by paying for translations of selected key water and sanitation publications in Portuguese and French. This was done at the request of, and through, projects they supported in Mozambique (Swiss) and Burkina Faso (UNICEF). Today, in Africa there is still an operational ITN network, with annual meetings in which information is shared.

Following the Ministerial Conference on Drinking Water and Environmental Sanitation (Noordwijk 1994) and with funding by the Netherlands Development Co-operation, IRC started the Stream project in 1998. This research for action project documented processes and experiences to identify opportunities to strengthen resource centres to become more effective in their support role to the water supply and sanitation sector. Results from this contributed to the Resources Development Centre programme on which we embarked in 2002. This concerns a five-year programme (2002 – 2006) to strengthen Resource Centres in 18 countries in Africa, Asian, Latin America and Europe. For more, read: http://www.irc.nl/projects/rcd/index.html

The published word

Titles published in this period include:

• Evaluation for village water supply planning, Cairncross et al., 1980, Technical Paper series no 15
• POETRI reference manual. Vol. 1, IRC, 1981, Technical Paper series no 16
• Community participation in water and sanitation : concepts, strategies and methods, White A., 1981, Technical Paper series no 17
• Small community water supplies : technology of small water supply systems in developing countries, Sundaresan, B.B. et al, 1983, Technical Paper series no 18

This last one became IRC’s best selling title with several print runs and a hard copy expanded version published by the prestigious Wiley Publishers. In 2002 a revised version was published as Small Community Water Supplies: Technology, peopleand partnership (TP40-E), with many contributions from developing country authors. See http://www.irc.nl/products/publications/title.php/147

Tags: information and communication