Women as WASH Leaders: Achieving Equitable Access to WASH Services in Ghana
Research has shown that the burden of water collection disproportionately affects women and children.
Research has shown that the burden of water collection disproportionately affects women and children.
Firmly grounded in proven practices, Breakthrough ACTION works in partnership with governments, civil society, and communities around the world to implement creative and sustainable SBC programming, nurture SBC champions, mainstream new techniques and technologies, and advocate strategic and sustained investment in SBC.
The USAID Resiliency in Northern Ghana (RING) project seeks to strengthen this structure in one of Ghana’s poorest regions by partnering directly with the regional and local governments to support their ability to fulfill their mandates to the communities they represent -- and improve the social and economic well-being of those communities (especially women) in the process.
This blog originally appeared on PSI’s Impact Blog.
“Initially, many people tried to discourage me by saying that [plumbing] was a job for men,” Ayé Judith Bodou explains. “But I didn’t give up.”
The West Africa Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Program (WA-WASH), implemented from 2011 to 2017, introduced innovative and low-cost water and sanitation technologies, and promoted appropriate hygienic behaviors at the community level. The program also developed practical models of sustainable WASH service delivery; and increases the capacity of national and regional institutions to replicate these approaches and models throughout the region.
With increasing rates of population growth and urbanization, infrastructure in African cities, such as water delivery systems and wastewater systems, can be overwhelmed. Poor governance, chronic underinvestment and a lack of skilled staff make it difficult for urban water utilities to provide safe drinking water to consumers. However, experience suggests that strong leadership and institutions, coupled with preventative risk-based management approaches and sustained capacity-building efforts, are critical to improving the quality of drinking water services in African cities.
CONTEXT
Globally, CLTS has been widely embraced as a strategy to end open defecation, and dozens of countries have incorporated the approach as part of national policy for rural sanitation. Though the “total sanitation” focus of CLTS is laudable, there is reason to believe that the poor and more vulnerable segments of the community do not benefit equally, as they are more likely to construct lower-quality toilets and revert to open defecation.
Under the African Urban Poor Improved Water Supply and Sanitation (AUP-IWS) program, USAID/Ghana implemented the Water Access, Sanitation and Hygiene for Urban Poor (WASH-UP) program from 2009 to 2012. WASH-UP started in October 2009 in slum communities of the two major cities of Accra and Takoradi, Ghana.
The Sanitation Service Delivery (SSD) Program in West Africa is a USAID-funded five-year cooperative agreement with Population Services International (PSI), PATH, and Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP).