We’ve spent the past few years leading a WASH initiative where we’re encouraging colleagues and organisations within our sector to ‘speak-up’ when things go wrong. This has included hosting game shows at conferences, conducting participatory research with frontline WASH staff, writing editorials and developing and promoting The Nakuru Accord: failing better in the WASH sector. This section of the website collates all of that cool stuff – in particular, check out the WASH Game Shows page where you can download materials to run them at your own events!
For an overview of what we’ve learned, check out this peer-reviewed journal article published in BMJ Global Health: The persistence of failure in water, sanitation and hygiene programming: a qualitative study
For more practical guidance, see the issue of Sanitation Learning Hub’s Frontiers of Sanitation: Learning From and Preventing Failure in WASH. You can also watch a recording (~12 mins, you will need to download the pdf) explaining the key messages of the Frontiers.
If you’d like to know more:
- Amplifying local voices to reduce failure in the WASH sector: Research we’ve been conducting with teams in sub-Saharan Africa, investigating why WASH programmes seem to be failing, and what local WASH staff think can be done about it.
- Amplifying WASH voices: a focus on funders: Research with WASH funders about why they think failures occur and what their role could be in reducing them.
- The Nakuru Accord: failing better in the WASH sector: Read and sign the accord – you’ll be in good company!
- WASH Game Shows: Download resources to run your own WASH failure events and check out our ideas for cool prizes!
- We talk shit: Listen, watch and read various things we’ve produced where we talk about WASH failures.
- Allies talk shit: A place to share where our WASH comrades have spoken about failure in their work.
