Accelerating WASH Video

Much has been achieved under the MDGs. Yet we all know that still 700 million people do not have access to clean water. And 2.5 billion people do not use improved sanitation facilities, out of which 1 billion people practice open defecation. This makes us extra committed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 aiming at full coverage of WASH for everyone in all countries by 2030.

Accelerating WASH

To do so, WASH Alliance International stands for a shift from hardware-construction towards WASH sector development. Our innovative approach will not only sustain after our programs stop, it will also accelerate and be able to meet the needs of a growing population.

Accelerating requires a different mind-set focused on reaching everyone (‘thinking big’). This encompasses standardisation of products & services, cost efficiency, and using effective multi-stakeholder techniques for lobbying the government, community mobilisation and generating demand.

Doing more with less  

Initially our sector development approach requires higher investments of time and money. Once all the stakeholders are on board and work together, it will lead to acceleration, while the investment costs continue to decline.

The graph shows that access to WASH services costed € 33 per person  over the first three years, declining to € 20 euro per person on average  over five years. The financial leverage of our funds in the countries has  continued to increase, as more consumers started building their own  water and sanitation facilities with savings or by accessing a loan.

Ingredients for acceleration 

The first results of acceleration for urban sanitation, rural sanitation, lobby and advocacy and environmental sustainability, have already become visible. We are now taking these programmes to the next level of acceleration. For example, over the next years the Urban Sanitation Programme in Uganda that is now operating successfully in four towns can be replicated to many more cities effectively by:

• Standardising and optimising the products and processes used
• Cooperating with the same financial institutions
• Peer-to-peer communication: neighbouring cities show interest because they see the success in the other cities, thus automatically creating demand
• Workshops and trainings can be organised for more cities at once, optimising our own inputs.

Best practices:
• Accelerating WASH in Kenya
• Accelerating WASH in Ghana
• Acceleratinng WASH in Uganda

Video on how we accelerate WASH in Uganda, Bangladesh and Kenya.

Press release on Accelerating WASH