Stef Smits is a senior programme officer and Co-director of IRC's Growth Hub. He has 20 years of professional experience in water supply and sanitation in over 25 countries in Europe, Latin America, Southern Africa, and South Asia. His main thematic expertise includes: institutional models for water supply, sustainability and enabling environment, monitoring, costing and financing of services and integrated water resources management.
Stef has led numerous projects on these topics, and published about them. In addition, he has ample management expertise: from consultancy assignments to multi-annual programmes, and units within an organisation. He has worked for a range of clients including bilateral donors, development banks, research funders and NGOs. Stef holds an MSc degree in Irrigation and Water Engineering from Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
The Community Water Plus project investigates the support that is being provided to community-managed rural water supplies. This is being done for twenty case studies of programmes from across India. Read more...
Public finance needs to be spent wisely to complement rather than substitute for other financing sources Read more...
For community-managed rural water supply to be sustainable, a "plus" is needed: special efforts to empower communities during project implementation, and continued support from government during service delivery. The Community Water Plus project seeks to get a better understanding of the costs of... Read more...
Saraswati Halder, the president of the Durganagar Kanchantala water committee, shows me the committee's bank booklet. It shows only one transaction: 100 Rupees (about 1.50 US$) deposited in 2011, more than 3 years ago. Read more...
The Community Water Plus project assesses twenty cases of support to community managed rural water supplies across India. IRC carried out one of these studies around support to community-managed handpumps in Patharpratima, West Bengal. The case study concludes that an effective mechanism for... Read more...
Everyone in Digambarpur has access to a basic level of water service thanks to support model that allows w ater committees to outsource technical... Read more...
This "how to" note provides practical guidance on how to analyse value for money (VFM) in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes. It shows... Read more...
This brief summarises recent data on budget allocations to sanitation in four African municipalities. Read more...
What is domestic public finance? and why is it essential for providing universal water and sanitation services? Read more...
Based on a review of the costs of 179 water and sanitation projects carried out by FHIS (Honduran Social Investment Fund) over the last five years, we established the unit cost ranges for different intervention models. We also identified the main factors driving the costs of water and sanitation... Read more...
Water For People, IRC and Aguaconsult have developed a set of tools to support the financial planning to reach Everyone Forever with water services. These tools were validated in the municipalities of Tiraque and Araní in Bolivia. Read more...
Regulation is a key function for delivering sustainable water services, both in urban and rural environments. Read more...
Financing Post-Construction Support (direct support)", is a video documentary which explores various options and opportunities for post construction support for water and sanitation facilities in Ghana. It draws largely on efforts by two of IRC Ghana's programmes, the Triple-S and WASHCost projects in facilitating sector dialogue and innovations to addresses the situation.
This video was produced in collaboration with the Ghana Watsan Journalists Network.
Read more...Email requests can sometimes trigger the most interesting thoughts and ideas. Read more...
How should WASH-related targets make it into the United Nation's post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals? Read more...
It would be easy, and wrong, to say that global conferences rarely deliver results, for sometimes they offer brand new ways of seeing things. Read more...