Projects
IRC is involved in a number of projects with a variety of partners, with different funding mechanisms and with different life spans. All projects are contributing to the overall aim of facilitating the sharing, promotion and use of knowledge to improve the long-term effectiveness of development work in the water supply and sanitation sector. The projects listed in this folder are ones in which IRC is one of the leading partners. Many regional specific projects can be found under the regional programme.
SHAW
The 2010 - 2014 Sanitation, Hygiene And Water (SHAW) project is carried out within STBM, Indonesia’s national programme for Community-Led Total Sanitation with five ‘pillars’ on sanitation and hygiene practices. Within STBM, SHAW is looked at further developing Indonesia’s innovative approaches to promoting, monitoring and documenting behavioural change in sanitation and hygiene and building district and village capacities for developing, implementing and managing well-sustained district-wide sanitation and hygiene programmes.
WA-WASH
The West Africa Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Initiative (WA-WASH) concentrates on several WASH issues including: sanitation coverage in rural settings, capacity building, management at different levels, knowledge sharing, and water delivery both for domestic and other uses, e.g. small irrigation in rural settings. The initiative, funded by USAID and coordinated by Florida International University (FIU) - leader of the Global Water for Sustainability (GLOWS) consortium, runs between 2011 and 2015 in Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Ghana. Partners are: Winrock International, WaterAid, CARE, the International Water Association (IWA), the Rainwater Harvesting Implementation Network (RAIN), the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, RWSN/SKAT, and Building Partnerships for Development (BPD). A select number of activities will be coordinated with UNICEF and local West African partners
Pan-Africa Programme
For the past 3 decades, many development organisations used different approaches such as provision of latrines and subsidizing the cost of building toilets to help the poor people access sanitation facilities but these approaches have not achieved intended results as there are still a significant number of people with no access to sanitation facilities.
Plan International with the assistance of IRC and IDS (UK) is working with communities in identifying barriers to accessing sanitation in Africa and exploring initiatives to ensure proper sanitation facilities are available to them. In February 2007, Plan RESA identified Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) as a viable approach for going to scale.
In January 2010, Plan launched a Euro 8.5 million Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project in eight African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Niger and Sierra Leone. With the backing of the Dutch government, this five-year project (till December 2014) dubbed “Empowering self-help sanitation of rural and peri-urban communities and schools in Africa,” was designed to promote and scale-up community based and school focused self-help sanitation approaches in Africa. The project is also intended to support communities’ aspirations to climb the ladder of sanitation by introducing Sanitation Marketing.
Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All
Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All (SSH4A) programme funded by AusAID, DFID, private donors and DGIS and implemented by SNV, IRC and local and national governments and local NGOs in Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Duration: 2008 - 2015
WASHTech
The overall development objective of new project is to strengthen sector capacity to make effective investment in new technologies, through research and development of a framework, which assesses the potential of new technologies introduced into innovative de-centralised systems.This project funded by the EC FP7- Africa research programme takes place in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Uganda from 2011 to 2013.
More information on the project, updates on progress and outputs can be found on the project website: http://washtechafrica.wordpress.com/
Triple-S
Launched in December 2008, Sustainable Services at Scale (Triple-S) is an initiative that seeks to identify sustainable approaches to water delivery and access by departing from project-based, one-off and stand-alone implementation of water systems. It is a six-year multi-country learning initiative that aims to contribute to the realisation of indefinitely sustainable water services delivered at scale . In collaboration with selected national partners, Triple-S will support a paradigm shift at the operational level for decentralised service delivery and will bring about a re-appraisal of the design and planning mechanisms of development assistance to the rural water supply sector. For more information contact: triple-s@irc.nl.
WASHCost
The WASHCost Project (2008-2012) in which IRC and partners are involved, researches the life-cycle costs of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in rural and peri-urban areas in four countries. The rationale is that WASH governance will improve at all levels, as decision makers and stakeholders analyse the costs of sustainable, equitable and efficient services and put their knowledge to use.
EUWI-Africa Working Group
The Africa-EU Strategic Partnership on Water Affairs and Sanitation is being implemented through the Africa component of the EU Water Initiative (EUWI). The purpose of this Partnership is to make an effective joint contribution to the achievement of water and sanitation related MDGs in Africa, principally through promoting an efficient and effective working environment. The Africa Working Group (AWG) was established in 2004 and has since then promoted and led the Africa-EU Partnership.
SWITCH
SWITCH was a 5 year research programme (2006-2011) funded by the European Union focused on sustainable Urban Water Management. IRC's contribution focused on supporting stakeholder engagement processes in SWITCH cities and research on social inclusion issues.
UN-Habitat-SCP-BUS
The UN-Habitat Sustainable Cities Programme has a component on Basic Urban Services, i.e. sanitation and water services. IRC is taking the lead on this Basic Urban Services (BUS) for the period 2003-2008. The emphasis will be on demonstration and scaling-up processes in several cities in different countries, the anchoring of strategies, methods and approaches in local institutions for future capacity building, and the documenting, sharing and using of these different experiences and lessons learned.
