Features
Key issues in Sanitation for the Urban Poor at IRC 40 symposium
IRC is marking its 40th anniversary with a three-day practitioner and research based Symposium that will focus attention on one of the most intractable and neglected problems of our age – sanitation in the poorest areas of the world’s cities.
Essays on urban sanitation
For the IRC symposium on Sanitation for the Urban Poor, IRC has invited five authors to write an essay that provides an overview of the concurrent thinking around five selected topics: improving local governance; partnerships for sanitation; dynamics of urban settlements; financing sanitation for the urban poor; and effective urban sanitation technologies for the poor.
The Atieno family: A comic strip about the urban poor
Allow us to introduce you to the comic strip heroes, the Atieno family and their friends and neighbours, who will star at the IRC sanitation and urban poor symposium in November 2008.
Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS): long term validation and agreed standards are needed
IRC’s Christine Sijbesma in her summary paper for the South Asian Sanitation and Hygiene Practitioners workshop, raises a number of cautionary matters that are emerging and need to be addressed for the continued success of CLTS.
Once on the sanitation ladder, families want to go higher
A critical factor in the success of Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) in Asia and Africa is held to be that community members, after the initial stages of “ignition” and adoption of safe hygienic and sanitation practices, rise up the “sanitation ladder” to install and use better sanitation facilities.
Six drivers for families to move up the sanitation ladder
Six factors lead communities to adopt CLTS and then drive movement up the ladder.
GWA News
Rainwater harvesting special
The two case studies from Brazil and Burkina Faso show that differences between men and women, rich and poor are decisive for the use of rainwater systems.
Brazil: Rainwater harvesting in semi-arid region helps women
The north-east of Brazil is a semi-arid region, characterised by severe lack of water and droughts that contribute to underdevelopment of the region. The “One Million Rainwater Harvesting Programme” (P1MC) was launched by civil society groups in the region, targeting rural families without a secure drinking water source close to their home.
Burkina Faso: From water managers to water “beggars”
In a village in northern Burkina Faso, in the Sahel region, a rainwater harvesting (RWH) system for drinking water was installed in a family compound. The system catches rainwater from a sheet-iron roof and diverts it to a tank with a capacity of 10m3.
Cap-Net News
Africa: network to raise awareness of “undervalued” groundwater resources
“Groundwater is undervalued, understaffed, under-resourced, misunderstood and underground, yet it is the substratum on which surface water flows." This was one of the key observations at a workshop to discuss the formation of an African Groundwater Network held in South Africa in June 2008.
Networks in action: Sri Lanka, Sudan and South Africa
Cap-Net supports a number of seminars and workshops annually, during which networks and their members explore critical issues in integrated water resources management (IWRM). Such activities recently brought together academics, practitioners and students in Sri Lanka, Sudan and South Africa.
WSSCC News
New compendium supports environmental sanitation
This joint production by Sandec and WSSCC has been developed to support the wider Household-centred environmental sanitation (HCES) planning approach, by pulling essential information together in one volume and promoting a systems approach.
Global Sanitation Fund takes first steps forward
Work to implement the Global Sanitation Fund (GSF), the first global financing mechanism to increase expenditure on sanitation and hygiene, has begun. The GSF is now taking its first concrete steps in Nepal, Madagascar and Uganda.
WASH, women and radio: a winning trinity for the WASH Media Awards 2008
The 2007-2008 edition of the WASH Media Awards culminated in August at the World Water Week in Stockholm, where four women journalists -- three of them working in radio-- were honoured for their reporting on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) issues in developing countries.
News from the WSSCC Secretariat
As reported in Source Bulletin No 51, WSSCC now divides its activities into three programme areas: networking and knowledge management, advocacy and communications, and the Global Sanitation Fund (GSF).
IRC News
Highlights from this year of sanitation and hygiene work
As well as hosting a symposium on sanitation for the urban poor in November 2008 IRC and partners have been stepping up information and advocacy activities and field work on sanitation and hygiene in this International Year of Sanitation.
Jordan, Palestine, Egypt: How process documentation made a difference
The last issue of Source Bulletin announced the publication of five titles in English and Arabic documenting the results of the Euro-Med Participatory Water Resources Scenarios (EMPOWERS) research and development project (2003-2007). The following extracts illustrate how process documentation made a difference; not only within the team and for stakeholders involved in the project, but in the wider water situation in the three countries where EMPOWERS was working.
Improving wastewater agriculture by involving stakeholders
As part of the Wastewater Agriculture and Sanitation for Poverty Alleviation (WASPA) project in Asia, IRC helped to facilitate four one-day sanitation and hygiene training sessions for 100 wastewater farmers in Rajshahi, Bangladesh.
Partners bag 9,000 books in IRC giant relocation sale
Two NETWAS offices from Kenya and Uganda have between them ordered 2,950 copies of selected IRC book titles, which IRC offered to partner organisations from its resource centre network.
