Blog - Water Services That Last
This blog aims to regularly report experiences, stories and questions on rural water supply. It will ask questions and provoke debate on how sustainability of water systems can be improved. It seeks to provide examples and learn from failures. It does not aim to provide ready-made answers; if those would exist, they would win the Nobel Prize for Water, or, more likely, the Silver Bullet Award.
We invite you to contribute your thoughts and stories, to provoke and to question, and to share these debates more widely.
Is it a theory of change or isn’t it?
01 Mar 12
Three years of creating change in Triple-S. Not a nice linear process but trying things out, getting better at it and finding words to describe what we do. And so it is time to step back and put it on paper. What is it this theory of change of Triple-S? Is it a theory or [...]
Mid term assessment blues
21 Feb 12
My name is Patrick Moriarty. I’m the director of IRC’s Triple-S project, and am blogging at waterservicethatlast for the first time – although I also blog sporadically on my own site . This blog was started by Stef Smits, head of research in Triple-S but is now being opened up to other project staff – [...]
From policy to practice in rural water – ‘it’s the money stupid’
07 Feb 12
Over the last year and a half we have been doing a lot of work with various international donors and other development partners like NGOs who support investments in rural water in developing countries. We have organised a number of …Continue reading →
Chicken or egg?
27 Jan 12
January is MUS month. After the meeting in New York, I reported on in my previous blog post, last week saw the regular MUS Group meeting, hosted this time by Winrock International. The group of organisations working on multiple-use of …Continue reading →
Who is your biggest competitor? The MDGs.
13 Jan 12
This week, I had to pleasure to present a scoping study we did with IWMI on multiple-use services (MUS) in 5 countries to the client, the Rockefeller Foundation. During the meeting, there was the opportunity for staff of the Foundation …Continue reading →
The state of the nations
03 Jan 12
It is the end/start of the year (depending on the moment at which you read this), so time to look at where one stands. The Joint Monitoring Programme of the United Nations has also done that for the state of …Continue reading →
“Does help help?” is the wrong question
12 Dec 11
In this blog, I have argued at times for the need for post-construction support to rural water supply, and so have various publications of IRC and others over the past decade. However, there has been critique to this, stating that …Continue reading →
Going Dutch
27 Nov 11
One of the pillars of the new Dutch development policy is to promote private sector involvement, as a motor for economic growth. This pillar equally applies to water, one of the sectors supported by Dutch development cooperation. However, since the …Continue reading →
Everyone, Forever?
27 Oct 11
This video tells the story of the approach of Everyone, Forever, followed by Water For People in the municipality in Chinda, Honduras. Water For People has tried to achieve 100% coverage in rural WASH in this municipality, and to set …Continue reading →
Water and sanitation: priceless but not costless
23 Oct 11
“We just take the programmes as they fall upon us, with their conditions. One donor uses a per capita threshold of 150 US$/capita and wants us to follow one approach, and we will do that. Another uses a threshold of …Continue reading →
