Co-director | Growth Hub
Volg
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 COMAS – Municipal Water and Sanitation Committee – of the municipality of El Negrito (in the Department of Yoro, Honduras), is strongly committed to providing universal water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services to its citizens. But it needs a plan to get there. And it needs to make a plan... Read more...
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...
Ultimate success in water service delivery is defined by the service level received by households. There can be excellent infrastructure and impeccable administration, but if households don't receive enough water of good enough quality without spending an excessive amount of time collecting it,... Read more...
Communal wealth is one of the most important factors affecting rural water services, and household connections are the only technology which can... 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...
Whilst poor design or siting of latrines or hygiene related facilities are not the root cause of violence, these issues can contribute to increased... 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...
For Ghana the main recommendations were to revisit the Service Delivery Approach (SDA) , introduce more robust monitoring, increase sector funding... Read more...
This paper describes how the ASTRA tool can help identify potentially appropriate technical solutions fro the delivery of arsenic and saline-free... Read more...
What is the best technical solution to deal with arsenic-polluted and saline water in Bangladesh? When is it better to treat the water or to choose... Read more...
One of the nicest water-related customs in Honduras is the breaking of the pot. When a village gets connected to a water system, part of the inauguration ceremony consists of an old woman from the village symbolically throwing a clay water-pot on the ground, so that it breaks. She will never need... Read more...
Triple-S has successfully promoted sustainability and the Service Delivery Approach (SDA) at the international level and in target countries. The... Read more...
The domain of inquiry of this review is the rural water sector in low- and middle-income countries. Read more...
