Please click here to read more about the WASH Media Awards, to see the winners' pictures, read their articles or listen to their radio reportages; or here to read the press release.

As Programme Manager, Mr. Jackson will manage the further development and operation of the GSF, reaching out to existing and potential donors and working closely with partners and governments where the GSF is being implemented.

 “Of the many aspects of my professional life, my work in community sanitation has always been the most rewarding," said Mr. Jackson, 59. "I believe that this new position with WSSCC is an opportunity to use much of my professional experience to date: as sanitation adviser, policy analyst and project manager responsible for international grants and loans. I foresee that the biggest challenges of the job will be to identify promising approaches to improving sanitation in areas where progress has been slow, and then to make available the most appropriate form of financial support that will catalyse a significant acceleration in both behavioural change and sanitation coverage.”

Read more here.

• National Coordinators and Regional Reps meet in Geneva
• From Planning to Reality: Global Sanitation Fund Takes First Steps Forward
• Awash in WASH Media Award Entries
• Blue to Brown in Stockholm Town

WSSCC Members & Partners

• WASH Case Study Series Premiers
• New National Coordinators Speak About their Experiences and Expectations

News on the Website

• Send an E-Card, Save a Life!

AND MUCH MORE! here

Send an e-card, raise awareness and generate action for the billions of people who lack access to safe water and proper sanitation here.

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To learn more please visit the Nigeria page.

The WASH Media Award entry deadline has passed, with 146 television, radio and print submissions received from 40 countries around the world. The 2007-2008 awards, which will be presented formally during the World Water Week in Stockholm in August, aim to increase media coverage about water supply, sanitation and hygiene issues in developing countries.

To read more about the 2007-2008 edition of the Awards, please click here.

Sanitation Reaches the End of the Beginning (Perhaps)

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

So said Winston Churchill at a turning point in one of humanity's darkest hours, the Second World War.

In the midst of this International Year of Sanitation, and while CSD-16 follows up on the implementation of decisions on water and sanitation from CSD-13, it could be said that we have reached the end of the beginning in our efforts to eradicate the global sanitation crisis.

To read the whole article, please click here.

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Forty percent of the world's population - 2.6 billion people - do not have access to basic sanitation. The Millennium Development Goal target of halving the number of people without access to sanitation is the furthest from being achieved. However, the estimated annual cost for attaining this goal is only $ 9.5 billion. If sustained, the same investment could ensure basic sanitation for the whole world in one or two decades. To help reach this target, the WSSCC is launching the Global Sanitation Fund, one of the major initiatives of the International Year of Sanitation 2008.

To learn more about the fund please visit the Global Sanitation Fund page.

Read more about the Award and the ceremony on our WASH in the news page.

Mr. Jon Lane has been appointed as the new Executive Director of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC). He succeeds Dr. Gourisankar Ghosh, who held the Executive Director position from 2001 to 2006, during which time he contributed largely to fostering the widespread success of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All (WASH) Campaign. Jon Lane's appointment was formally approved today by the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan.

Jon Lane is British and is a Civil Engineer by profession. He began his career as a consulting engineer in London before moving to international development work. In the late 1980's Jon Lane worked as country representative in Nepal for WaterAid, one of the world's leading non-governmental organizations concerned with drinking water and sanitation in developing countries. Following his stint with WaterAid in Nepal, he was Director of RedR (Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief). From there, he took the position of Director of WaterAid. Under his leadership, the organization received the prestigious Stockholm Water Prize for outstanding water related activities.

Jon Lane left the London-based NGO in 1999 to work as a senior-level consultant in water and sanitation, primarily for multilateral and bilateral agencies and NGOs, both globally and within Malawi, where he has lived since then. His work during that period mainly involved strategy, policy and advocacy work.

Additionally, Jon Lane has chaired and been a member of the steering committees of several prominent water and sanitation sector organizations.

Jon Lane has been an active member of WSSCC from its inception, even attending the New Dehli meeting in 1990, where the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council was created. He has been involved in some of WSSCC's key milestone moments, including Vision 21, a landmark project that established many of the principles that still guide WSSCC's activities, and the periodical Global Forums, which are meetings to establish priorities, measure progress, and plan for actions within the water and sanitation sector.

In January 2007, Jon Lane accepted the position of Interim Executive Director of WSSCC, to provide leadership to the organization during the transitional period before the appointment of its Executive Director.

Jon Lane will guide and direct WSSCC's activities through 2008, the International Year of Sanitation, and beyond. His top priorities include:

• increasing the number of countries with an active WASH presence - currently that number stands at 36;
• expanding WASH advocacy to push for greater global recognition of the importance of safe water supply, adequate sanitation and hygiene facilities;
• continuing the knowledge management and thematic networking activities of the WSSCC;
• launching a new sanitation grants programme, which is designed to support the scaling-up efforts of sanitation initiatives in developing countries.

After receiving the announcement, Jon Lane asserted "I am honoured to be appointed to this post. I intend to work with all my colleagues in WSSCC around the world to serve people in developing countries who lack sanitation and water."

According to Dr. Roberto Lenton, the WSSCC Chair, "Jon will bring to the position a deep knowledge of the field, through both his extensive on-the-ground experience in water and sanitation and his work with a broad range of civil society organizations. I greatly look forward to working with him in the years to come."

WSSCC was founded in 1990 in line with a United Nations General Assembly resolution to continue the work of the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990), and is since then legally and administratively hosted by the WHO. Its mission is to achieve sustainable water supply and sanitation for all people. Currently, 1.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion people - nearly half of the world's population, lack access to adequate sanitation. The Collaborative Council, using the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets for water and sanitation as a milestone, aims to ensure that these basic human rights are available to all people.

A controversial title and five high level panellists, H.E Mrs. Lindiwe Hendricks, Minister for Water Affairs and Forestry, South Africa, H.E. Dr. Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director, UN-Habitat, Mr. Jean-Pierre Elong Mbassi, Secretary General of United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, Mr. Goran Holmqvist, Acting Director General of SIDA, and Mr. Jean-Luc François, Deputy Director of Sectoral Policies and MDGs, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were key ingredients in a spirited debate at the 2007 World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden.  The debate focused on why more than a third of the world’s population still lacks access to safe sanitation—a situation that affects their health,  dignity, and economic potential.

The panel was moderated by Mr. Robert Lamb, who opened the debate by asking the panellists whether governments had given up on sanitation, as the number of unserved people is continuously growing.  He also questioned whether we all, including politicians, are getting used to the numbers of people dying as a result of inadequate or nonexistent sanitation schemes. 

Minister Hendricks countered the question by taking issue with the title of the seminar, contending that no government likes to see its people dying. She further argued that over the last ten years, sanitation has climbed the ladder of political priorities, and is now equal to water in that context.  She did concede, though,  that this momentum should be maintained in order to push sanitation even higher up on the political agenda.  According to Minister Hendricks, “Sanitation is not only for politicians, it is for all, since it implies dignity, health, women, environment, education, safety and security.”

Dr. Tibaijuka also referred to the rising profile of the sanitation debate, at both the national and local government levels. She pointed out that the challenge is not only a matter of political will, but also the need to involve the public domain and the media.  She also pushed for raising awareness at the household level, contending that “It is necessary to reach out to the people lacking safe sanitation, since they are the ones who need to mobilize the politicians.”  Dr. Tibaijuka acknowledged, however, that the complexity of the problem and the taboos associated with toilets form obstacles that inhibit and disadvantage the sanitation discussion.  With regard to the ever-growing urban slums, she contended that it is not very effective to provide sanitation to homeless people. 
 
Also disagreeing with the notion of ‘political neglect’ was Mr. Elong Mbassi. He argued that local governments do take sanitation seriously.  According to Mr. Elong Mbassi,  “The key lies in the dialogue between the local and national governments; the greater the role of local authorities, the smaller the risk of political neglect.” In answer to the question of whether local business is a key player in providing sanitation services, he pointed out that private business is already providing most of the coverage, but the challenge there is how they can be more performance-focused and less corrupt.

Mr. François argued for the need for a clear strategy for sanitation, including forging partnerships. He also strongly stressed the vital importance of emphasizing the economic costs associated with under-investment in sanitations services.

The panel discussion also included questions and comments from the audience and evolved on to the need to create awareness within communities, since sanitation will only be a priority at the political level when it is as household level.  A call for empowering the people directly affected by inadequate basic sanitation was echoed in various messages, including by the Prince of Orange, who argued that we should not reach out to the already-converted. Successful awareness-raising campaigns were debated in order to see whether sanitation experts could learn from other sectors.
The debate further raised issues as diverse as law enforcement and alternative ways of funding sanitation.  Offering a donor perspective, Mr. Holmqvist stressed the need for an integrated approach to coordinate the various aspects of sanitation, stating that “Responsibilities are too often shared and shuffled around, which ultimately weakens the sector.”

According to Jon Lane, who reported on the seminar, the overall message of the debate could be captured as the following: we lack activism, so we need to invest in public awareness as much as we embark on actual implementation schemes.

Summary of Jon Lane's keynote speech

One of the 'good ideas' out there, is the highly successful Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme in Bangladesh, established and piloted by the NGO VERC. Mr. Shaikh Halim, Executive Director of VERC, in a detailed presentation explained the workings of the CLTS, and the reasons for its success. CLTS aims to achieve a 100% hygienic sanitation, which means a total ban on open defecation, hand washing after use of the latrine, good personal hygiene practices, well managed latrines and water points, and so on. The approach uses social capital and peer pressure, recognises and promotes indigenous knowledge, values and tradition, and explores local skills and technologies. Not only has it been very successful in Bangladesh itself, but aspects of CLTS are now also being introduced in Asia (for instance in Nepal and Indonesia) and Africa (Nigeria, Uganda, Mozambique, and more).

Presentation on Community-Led Total Sanitation

Focusing especially on hygiene education and promotion, the second presentation highlighted Zimbabwe's Health Clubs. Set up and run by the communities, these Health Clubs play a vital role in wide-spread community education and behaviour change, on a wide range of health and hygiene related topics. Supported by NGOs and in accordance with Participatory Health and Hygiene Education (PPHE), community groups and schools have established Health Clubs that not only educate their peers and community members, but also provide assistance to those in need, and set overall standards for behaviour and conduct in the community. In a situation where the economic situation is constantly worsening and government service provision becomes more and more scarce, the self-help value of the Clubs is vast, also because the Clubs become hot-beds for income generating activities. This factor draws in the men to the Health Clubs, which is perceived as a positive development as it facilitates their exposure to the health and hygiene messages as well.

Presentation on Zimbabwe Health Clubs

In the third presentation, Robert Abaidoo of the University for Science and Technology in Ghana spoke about the linkages between the lack of sanitation and urban agriculture. In Accra as well as other urban centres in Ghana, the practice of small-scale urban agriculture is widespread. However, the wastewater being used by the farmers to water their crops is almost always contaminated with faeces, which in turn means that the crops get contaminated and those eating them fall ill. Developing better sanitation systems that prevent contamination of the water takes time, so in the mean time the programme tries to raise awareness of the dangers, and educate the farmers as well as the users and consumers of the crops how to adopt certain hygiene behaviours that will reduce the risks involved.

Presentation on Wastewater in Urban Agriculture

The last presentation of the seminar spoke about a large peri-urban programme in the eThekwini metropolitan area (Durban) in South Africa constructing Urine Diversion Toilets (UDTs) for low-income families in the rural areas around the city. Presented from the perspective of the evaluator of the programme, the presentation highlighted the health-impacts the programme has had so far.

Presentation on the eThekwini UDT programme evaluation: Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5 

All presentations proved fruitful grounds for questions and discussion. A challenge raised by Mr. Halim emphasized the often delicate relations between civil society and government, and the issue of subsidy. While CLTS is a non-subsidy approach, the Government of Bangladesh has a subsidy-policy for the poorest families. While the Government supports the premise of CLTS, it also wants to maintain its subsidy stance.

Both the Bangladesh and Zimbabwe presentations once more underlined the need for genuinely people-centred, demand-driven approaches that give people a choice and acknowledge their decision-making power. This formed a contradiction with the eThekwini programme, where households are essentially presented with only one option, namely the UDT. While it can be argued that the UDT is the most appropriate and sustainable technology for the situation and the results of the programme in terms of customer-satisfaction and health improvements have been very good, this doesn't take away the fact that people have not been presented with a choice, and a range of options. This sparked debate as to whether in some cases, slightly top-down approaches are justified.

Similarly, the role of regulation and enforcement was debated. In the past in certain countries, households were obliged by law to have a certain level of basic sanitation, and their compliance with these rules was actively enforced. Would there be value in re-introducing such a system? And what should be the balance between such enforcement, and behaviour change based on education and appreciation?

Other topics discussed included the economic value of excreta, the problem with unreliable coverage data, what to do where civil society is weak, how to ensure that successful approaches are adopted into government policies and programmes without loosing their authenticity and success, and the need to move from these successful projects, to strategic, long-term, national programmes.

In summarizing the discussion, Stephen Turner targeted the role of champions. External champions can drive a process up to a certain point, but when does the championing need to come from within the community -when does a programme or process become really internally driven? And how strong is the role of peer communication, and peer pressure?

Looking forward to the International Year of Sanitation in 2008, Stephen noted that the sector will be embarking on a major advocacy campaign, and it needs to use the many positive lessons learnt from programmes such as discussed in the seminar. There is a need to get other people talking about sanitation. To make them understand that sanitation will make a difference to the environment, to health, and to development.

This second edition of the WASH Media Awards solicits print, electronic and broadcast media submissions that deal with water supply, sanitation or hygiene issues from journalists in developing countries. The WASH Media Awards initiative also aims to give recognition those journalists who make raising public awareness of WASH and the related development issues a priority.

Eligible submissions must be published or broadcast between 1 July 2007 and 30 April 2008. French, English and Spanish are the three official languages of this competition.

Read the full announcement in English, French and Spanish

For more information, check out the Spanish language LatinoSan 2007 announcement, or visit the website from the 1st of July.