World Water Day 2011 (20-22 March) was celebrated in Cape Town, South Africa. This year, the theme of World Water Day was ‘Water and Urbanisation’. Global participants were given the opportunity to discuss how to tackle urban water and sanitation challenges in Africa. IRC’s very own Dick de Jong... Read more...
SNV staff from Vietnam published a short story from the "Rural Sanitation Supply Chains and Finance" workshop from January 16 to 21, 2011, that SNV Vietnam organized jointly with IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and SNV Asia in the north western Dien Bien province. Read more...
The 4 th South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN 4) will be hosted from 4-8 April 2011 in Sri Lanka. South Asia has progressed relatively well with sanitation and hygiene policies, institutions and investments. However it remains the region of the world with the largest number of people... Read more...
When faced with a difficult problem, one of the best ways to determine the way ahead is to ask the advice of someone who has faced a similar situation. This logic motivated a group of extremely enthusiastic WASH practitioners from Liberia and Sierra Leone to visit Bangladesh in November 2010. They... Read more...
In November 2010, WaterAid, with support from the research consortium SHARE, brought together 16 practitioners and researchers with expertise in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), health, equity and inclusion, education and gender to share knowledge and experiences and develop a research... Read more...
WSSCC will host a Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene from 9 to 14 October 2011 at the Mumbai Renaissance Convention Centre, bringing some 500 WSSCC members and sector professionals together in India for a week of sharing and learning around vital sanitation and hygiene topics. Read more...
How can WASH services be built to last? This critical question for sustainable services will be given a special focus in the four Source feature issues planned for 2011. In each issue we will publish stories that will be tagged as “WASH services that last”. Read more...
I wipe the dust from my eyes for what feels like the hundredth time, resist the urge to scratch the nagging bites around my ankles, and lean in closer to hear what Gladys Quispe has to say, as the squeaking pigs and clucking chickens compete with the feisty Bolivian woman. Read more...
At Akodokodoi village in Northern Uganda, the tree divides us. On one side, we the project staff from CARE and partner organisations sit on short wooden folding chairs, forming a loose circle with the men. On the other side of the tree the women settle themselves on the ground. Read more...
I am Bilabi Moses, a second year student of the Ugandan Christian University. I come from Buboolo parish, Bukissa Village, Masaba sub-county in Sironko district of Eastern Uganda. Masaba sub-county is characterised as being hilly since it is in the Mt Elgon region and blessed with many rivers. Read more...
Ghanaian planning processes do not systematically address the full range of post-construction costs to ensure indefinite provision of WASH services, according to Dr. Kwabena Nyarko, of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He is the director of the WASHCost project in Ghana which... Read more...
About 300 - 500 participants from all over the world are expected to attend the 6th Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) Forum, Kampala, Uganda, 29 November - 01 December 2011. The theme will be rural water supply in the 21 st century: myths of the past, visions for the future. Read more...
While the problem of poor sustainability - and the threat it poses to achieving the MDGs - may be well recognised, concrete steps for addressing it are considerably less clear. Triple-S, an IRC initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently completed a 13-country study to... Read more...
Waste water is a liquid asset was the slogan that came up in a discussion on World Water Day 2011 during the last day of the international conference 'Sustainable Water Management in Cities in Zaragoza. Read more...
Politicians do not want to be associated with things that are bad. It is important to support and engage politicians to learn how water management can be improved and improve the environment. These two important lessons for water sector advocates emerged from the December 2010 conference '... Read more...
Achieving sustainable development requires that we institutionalise and act upon lessons learned in the arena of urban water management and city development. Read more...
The IRC 2010 international symposium posed a series of challenges to the water and sanitation sector to improve its ability to cost and finance sustainable services – and to understand the price that communities pay when those services fail. Read more...
African project partners from Burkina Faso, Ghana and Uganda supported by four European partners have launched an applied research project to promote more effective investment in new technologies to achieve MDG targets. Read more...
The SaniFaso project was introduced in Burkina Faso in December 2010 with the aim of eradicating open defecation in 12 partnering communes (the lowest level of administrative division) throughout the country. For IRC, this is an excellent opportunity not only to embed the WASHCost results in the... Read more...
The principles of community-led total sanitation are being extended to schools and urban areas in eight African countries.IRC will contribute to a school-led total sanitation (SLTS) component in a broader five-year programme led by Plan Netherlands. Read more...