The GSF programme signed seven sub-grantees in late 2011 to commence activities on the ground – helping 1,770 Nepalese to have improved toilets. More important yet, a strong sense of ownership – a key principle of the GSF work in Nepal – is in place and should help in the rapid scaling up of the national programme.
Nepal has a new National Sanitation and Hygiene Master Plan, and another recent positive development occurred when the newly constituted National Sanitation and Hygiene Coordination Committee took up functions previously performed by the GSF’s Programme Coordinating Mechanism. This will enable increased opportunity for future learning and sharing with wider sector activities.
In 2011, UN-Habitat, the Executing Agency, moved ahead to develop strong working relationships with the district and regional local government officials through active engagement with the District and Regional WASH Coordinating Committees. This involved a number of capacity development activities on total sanitation initiatives, supporting the formulation of district strategies and action plans on total sanitation, as well as the development of future strategies for the sanitation programme initiated by the Department of Water Supply and Sanitation. As a result, within GSF working districts the WASH Coordination Committees have already taken up a more active role in facilitating sector actors to target unserved areas. The increased understanding on total sanitation approaches, along with improved monitoring mechanisms and consistent indicators, has meant that the local government is now leading the drive toward open defecation free communities.
Looking forward, the GSF programme in Nepal, as in other countries, has learning as a key component of its implementation, and the District WASH Coordination Committees will play acentral role in gathering and harnessing lessons learnt from the programme in the coming years. The programme will also facilitate the learning and sharing between WASH Coordination Committees in the GSF focus districts. In addition, collaborative baseline studies were undertaken in two of the five focus districts, and work on gathering data in the other three districts, based on the experience in the other two, will commence in early 2012. Also during the early part of 2012, additional subgrantees will be signed as a result of the ongoing second funding round, and the GSF implementation in Nepal is expected to accelerate.
