Highlights from 35 years of joint learning 6: 2000 - 2003

Updated - Thursday 23 August 2007

In this sixth and final article about 35 years of joint learning on information and knowledge sharing we will highlight some of the major achievements of IRC and partners since 2000, including work with international partners on scaling up, community water management, school sanitation, and the launching of networks on gender and knowledge

Scaling up community water management

From 1998 -2002 lessons learned in communities were documented and shared in a mix of face-to-face, e-conferences, articles, books, videos and training courses, see http://www2.irc.nl/manage/manuals/index.html. On the basis of this IRC, with WEDC, Plan, WaterAid, SKAT and the WSSCC organised in December 2001 a conference 'Scaling up Community of Rural Water Supply'. Scaling up entails institutional support to community managed systems with the objective of making these systems sustainable and equitable and increasing the coverage of rural water supply. The most interesting outputs from the conference were the background paper, the conference statement and a series of case studies from Switzerland, Uganda, India and South Africa.

The organising groups have continued to develop appropriate models for scaling up. One of the most important initiatives was an e-conference in June-July 2002 with a background paper, an archive of all 100 e-mail messages and weekly summaries. A synthesis of the e-conference is accessible at

IRC also developed a range of web pages consolidating this information, and has established a Thematic Group, called scaling up community management.

School sanitation lessons

Following earlier collaboration, UNICEF and IRC launched a joint School Sanitation and Hygiene Education programme, with an international workshop at IRC in February 2000 (See http://www2.irc.nl/sshe/projects/index.html).

Funded by the Dutch government, this project has almost been completed, resulting in a wealth of experiences, case studies, advocacy tools and training materials. Innovative child-centred approaches and strategies were developed and tested. This has resulted in significant changes in policies, procedures and interventions and a leverage of resources at national, district and school level. An updated version of the UNICEF Manual on School Sanitation and Hygiene based on the project's experiences in the six countries will be published in 2004.

Networks at 2nd WWF March 2000

Emerging from an earlier STREAM research project a global Streams of Knowledge coalition was launched by eight founding partners in The Hague 2000.

The Gender and Water Alliance was also launched as an Associated Programme of the Global Water Partnership. IRC inputs have included the first Gender Development Report, development of an advocacy leaflet, guidelines on lobbying and speaking for Gender and Water Ambassadors, and press work at various international conferences.

E-learning

IRC developed and ran four electronic distance learning courses in 2001 and 2002 on Challenges to the Urban Water and Sanitation sector, together with The European Network University, in Amsterdam. Each three-week course was designed and structured specifically for the Internet and the majority of the 66 participants were living in developing countries.

This experience was taken into account when running three electronic conferences related to our web site:

School Sanitation and Hygiene Education 'Every child clean through school hygiene' from 29 April to 14 June 2002, (Summary).
Scaling up community management of rural water supplies, in June and July, 2002, (Summary).
Challenges of international goals in the water sector, including MDGs, from 20 October to 7 November 2003, (Summary).

Increased funding for IRC over next 5 years

Core financing agencies in the Netherlands have increased support for IRC' s information sharing activities over the next five years. Following earlier evaluation and discussions the Dutch Directorate-General for Internatioanl Co-operation (DGIS) and Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) have approved a new funding proposal and Business Plan 2002 - 2006. The support amounts to Euro 14 million over the next five years. This will enable IRC to focus less on generating resources from the market and more on its core ambitions, namely to be:

a leading WSS knowledge broker, with a responsive multilingual database accessible to its clients;
a leading low cost publishing and dissemination house for the WSS sector;
a leading facilitator of resource centres in developing nations.

WELL funding

In September 2001 the WELL Resource Centre Network on water, sanitation and environmental health started, in which IRC, WEDC and LSHTM have been working with eight partners in the developing world. The WELL project is an Euro 6 million DFID-funded programme of information, networking and advisory services, and training and capacity strengthening that runs until September 2006.

As a result, now several hundreds of organisations and individuals in the South have received free answers on their enquiries and free publications. IRC has been contributing its knowledge generation expertise on gender, poverty, school sanitation, hygiene promotion, water supply technology, monitoring, in collaboration with the Southern WELL network partners - suitable fact sheets, overview and synthesis papers, and Briefing Notes and Policy Briefs. Other themes have been tackled by WEDC and LSHTM, also in collaboration with Southern network partners. These services are continuing, now more in closer partnership with DFID and international organisations, and key findings will be presented at international events.

Most WELL partners joined the three-day hands-on knowledge management training workshop held immediately following the Sixth Water Information Summit, organised by IRC and the WaterWeb consortium on 15-17 September 2003 in Delft. IRC supported several WELL partners on internalising Knowledge Management.

The first WELL project started in 1996, managed by LSHTM and WEDC. WELL is now managed by WEDC and IRC in collaboration with LSHTM and six Southern WELL network partners.

Knowledge sharing

Presentations by IRC and partners on knowledge sharing for improved water and sanitation programmes culminated at three international water events in 2003, the 3rd World Water Forum in Japan in March, the Sixth Water Information Summit and Knowledge Management Workshop at IRC in September and at the WEDC conference in Nigeria in October. We published several articles about these in earlier newsletters in 2003, see for instance the Source Bulletin 28.

Publications

A completely revised edition of IRC's best selling title from 1981 was published in 2002. This time - Small Community Water Supplies: Technology, People and Partnership, had contributions from 29 authors, half of theme from the developing world. Technical Paper no 40, 2002

A new series web-based Thematic Overview Papers was started in 2003 with eight new titles, some of them in French and Spanish. . People without access to Internet can request a paper copy from the Publications Department of IRC.