rural water supply

Brief

Finding New Solutions to Strengthen Local Systems and Improve WASH Service Delivery and Sustainability

This fact sheet highlights SWS’s work in Ethiopia and Uganda, where SWS is working with local actors to better understand and strengthen local systems for rural water and small-town sanitation service delivery. In each location, SWS is promoting and facilitating learning alliances as a vehicle for more sector coordination and innovation. These platforms bring together actors at the district and town levels around a shared vision to develop and execute collective actions to strengthen systems for sustaining WASH services.

Brief

An Examination of the Causal Conditions to Successful Revenue Collection for Preventive Maintenance Services to Sustain Rural Water Systems

This research brief presents findings from a comparative analysis by University of Colorado Boulder of the conditions that influence whether rural water users pay for preventive maintenance of water services. Whave, a partner of the USAID-funded Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership (SWS), uses a preventive maintenance model to support sustainable water services in Uganda’s Kamuli District.

Blog

Reflections on the University of North Carolina's (UNC) Annual Water and Health Conference

The UNC’s Water Institute annual policy-meets-science exchange has become the go-to domestic knowledge-sharing forum among water and sanitation development practitioners, funders, and academia. This year USAID participated in more than 15 presentations and side events on a wide array of topics, including designing sanitation enterprises, rural water supply, and examining research’s role in driving policy and promoting change.

Brief

Understanding the Network that Sustains Rural Water Services in Uganda’s Kabarole District

This research brief presents findings from a network analysis of stakeholder relationships affecting rural water service sustainability in Kabarole District, Uganda. The USAID-funded Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership (SWS), with support from IRC, is bringing stakeholders together in a Learning Alliance – a platform for stakeholders involved in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) service delivery and engaged in testing and learning about methods for improving and sustaining it.

Fact Sheet

Adopting a Risk-Based Approach to Rural Water Supply Sustainability in Kenya

This fact sheet highlights SWS’s work in Kitui County, Kenya, where Oxford and UNICEF are developing, scaling-up, and testing the FundiFix model as one response to Kitui County’s rural water challenge. The goal is to provide a model for universal, rural water service delivery. FundiFix provides a performance-based approach to maintaining water infrastructure, using ‘smart handpumps’ that collect real-time information on abstraction volumes and breakdown incidents. Oxford and UNICEF are incubating the local Kenyan company Miambani Ltd.

Fact Sheet

Develop and Scale District Public-Private Partnerships that Sustain Reliable Rural Water Supply

This fact sheet highlights SWS’s work in Uganda, where Whave is working to cultivate a sustainable model for rural water service delivery by testing a preventive maintenance approach in three pilot districts. Operating as a Ugandan regional service provider, Whave is signing multi-year preventive maintenance service agreements with communities that require community leaders to charge operation and maintenance tariffs, manage the collected funds in supervised bank accounts, and pay an annual service fee.

Blog

Where to Find USAID at the 2018 UNC Water and Health Conference

The Water and Health Conference: Where Science Meets Policy will take place October 29–November 2, 2018, at the University of North Carolina ­(UNC)-Chapel Hill. The UNC Water Institute’s annual event has grown to become one of the most important gatherings in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector held in the United States. The conference this year focuses on five themes:

Webinar

Webinar: Preventive Maintenance Models for Sustainable Rural Water Services

SWS is holding a webinar on August 23 to present recent learning about preventive maintenance, and how it can help local governments, communities, and the local private sector to shift the paradigm from paying pump mechanics to fix broken pumps to paying them to keep water services running.