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The Water and Development Technical Series is a set of technical briefs that provide guidance on important topics for developing and implementing water and sanitation activities in support of the…
This Black History Month, USAID’s Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene is celebrating Brittany Thomas, a Foreign Service Officer, based in Senegal at the Sahel Regional Office where she leads water security, sanitation, and hygiene (WSSH) and climate adaptation programming. Learn more…
It is estimated that two billion people—a quarter of the world’s population—live without access to safe, sanitary toilets. To achieve SDG 6.2 (‘Achieving access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all by 2030’) investment must quadruple.
However, current subsidy and demand…
Context
Water insecurity - including lack of access to drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene products and services - disproportionately impacts those who are poor and who face social, political, or legal discrimination. However, investments in equitable water security, water resource allocation…
The Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2014 establishes the requirement to develop a WASH Needs Index. The WASH Needs Index provides a foundational input into the process of prioritizing Water for the World High-Priority Countries, in addition to identifying countries requiring congressional…
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Stories
How partner feedback is prompting the Partnership for Better Living to improve public-private WASH sector collaboration
The Partnership for Better Living is a five-year cooperative agreement between USAID and LIXIL, through its social brand, SATO. The partnership will develop reliable sanitation supply chains and contribute to SATO’s goal of reaching 100 million people with sanitation and hygiene solutions.
From the moment we launched in late 2021, The Partnership for Better Living (PBL) set out to listen. For us to successfully achieve the partnership’s goals – among them to strengthen the business and enabling environment for sanitation and hygiene access, and to improve the availability of products and the reliability of the sanitation supply chain – we knew we needed to hear from partners, past, present, and even future.
“Partners” in this context included manufacturers of SATO products, NGOs who procured SATO toilets or handwashing solutions for their programs, and leaders of…
This Black History Month, USAID’s Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene is celebrating Brittany Thomas, a Foreign Service Officer, based in Senegal at the Sahel Regional Office where she leads water security, sanitation, and hygiene (WSSH) and climate adaptation programming. Learn more about her experience in WSSH, her unique skills and perspectives that led her to USAID, and her advice for the next generation of Black professionals in international development.
Carmelita Francois: The Center for Water, Security Sanitation and Hygiene is really excited to be featuring you this month for Black History Month to highlight diversity and black talents who lead the WSSH work that we do and also work internationally. In the summer of 2014, you interned at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research Bangladesh (ICDDRB) with the WASH Benefits Project promoting hygiene interventions to prevent childhood growth stunting. I'm really curious to know why you…
Jeff Goldberg, Director of USAID’s Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene, and Christine Gottschalk, Director of USAID’s Center for Resilience, attend the SWOT launch at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Photo credit: Jeff Goldberg, USAID
On December 15, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency’s (NASA) U.S.-European Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission launched a satellite that will map the Earth’s surface water at an unprecedented level of detail. The SWOT satellite will provide new and essential information to decision-makers and communities who need to track water in their local areas to better prepare for climate change. SWOT will circle the globe every 21 days and will, for the first time ever, provide data on how water flows into and out of over 90% of the world’s freshwater bodies. The satellite launch is the culmination of fifteen years of partnership between NASA, the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), and…
Most of us are familiar with the pattern of doing research, disseminating findings, and hoping for uptake into policy and practice. If the research partners don’t involve potential evidence users early on in the process, however, most outputs end up not being used effectively, or at all.
In a session at 2022 World Water Week, USAID shared their new and focused approach for promoting stronger engagement between research teams and WASH implementation programs. USAID’s Action Research Initiative encourages sector-wide collaboration so that research feeds directly into implementation. It also increases the effectiveness and impact of WASH investments by positioning them within a strategic package.
The first iteration of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Partnerships and Learning for Sustainability (WASHPaLS) research program, implemented from 2016 to 2021, provided an example of building partnerships between researchers, government agencies, and UNICEF. These partners worked…
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