Editor’s Note: Our Spotlight On... series shines a light on funders and NGOs working to bring critical solutions to water, sanitation, and hygiene issues. This guest blog, the second in our series, was authored by Maggie Kohn, director of corporate responsibility at Merck. A global health care company, Merck discovers, manufactures, and sells medicines, vaccines, and animal health products. Recently, Merck has become an emerging player in the WASH sector as well. 

Merck and Safe Water Network are working together to bring sustainable water solutions to the rural poor in India. The new partnership will provide safe water access to another 20,000-30,000 people, such as this mother and child in Warangal in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

I sense the question on everyone's mind when I introduce myself at a WASH event: "Merck is a global health care company. So, why is she here?" 

The explanation is quite simple: Merck's mission is to help the world be well. Clean water is at the foundation of this promise.

Merck's entrance into the WASH arena is relatively recent, and occurred in parallel with the expansion of our business into emerging markets such as India, Brazil, China, and countries in sub-Saharan Africa. As Merck began to ask local ministers of health in these countries how we could help them address their greatest health challenges, the issue that came up often was lack of access to clean water and its huge toll on the health of their people. 

Until the most basic health needs — access to food, water, sanitation, and hygiene — are addressed, large segments of populations in emerging markets cannot benefit from our products, including life-saving vaccines. For Merck to be a true partner and commit to helping our customers address their most formidable challenges, we realized WASH must be part of the overall strategy. 

Starting in 2010, we spent about a year determining how to "dip our toe" into the WASH field. While we have a long history in public-private health partnerships, none have been specific to clean water. Luckily, we found that many of our existing partners, including CARE, the World Bank, PSI, UNICEF, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are also involved in WASH. We engaged them in conversations about their work, joined groups such as Global Water Challenge, and made connections with companies such as Coke, Dow, Pepsi, and P&G who are already doing good work in this field. We also talked to shareholders such as the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility and became a signatory to the UN's CEO Water Mandate. 

These conversations confirmed for us the critical importance of addressing WASH (we were on the right path!), but also that we could not do it on our own. We needed to team up with the right partners. Many people we spoke with suggested starting with one geographic focus — rather than pilots in several countries, as we had initially been considering — and then expanding from there. Keeping their input in mind, we identified our initial focus area of southern and central India — both important markets for our business and both severely affected regions by WASH issues.

Our conversations also made us think hard about the kind of investment we wanted to make and the kind of impact we wanted to have. By that, I mean did we want to simply invest our money in bricks and mortar for hundreds of new water stations, which would basically require writing a check? Or did we want to invest in research-based projects that sought to determine the most effective ways to address the WASH challenge and thus create sustainable long-term approaches? What appealed to us about this latter approach is that we could apply the skills of our employees to help develop health impact studies, behavior change communications, and public advocacy outreach strategies. 

Out of this we developed our WASH strategy for India, which mirrors our core mission: to help the Indian population be well. Wherever we operate, the key to achieving this mission is a strong understanding of the health needs of our customers. Our strategy in India includes our products that address water-related diseases and our work with partners to change behaviors related to sanitation and hygiene. 

On World Water Day 2012, we announced a three-year partnership with the Safe Water Network (SWN). What we like about SWN is that they work through their projects to gain a better understanding of the environmental, socioeconomic, behavioral, and market challenges that prevent access to clean water. They pilot various approaches and models, and then take the learnings to identify sustainable models that can be scaled on a wide-spread basis. Our work with them will focus on Andhra Pradesh in southern India, where we will work to increase awareness of the importance of clean water and hygiene to drive behavior change. We plan to share key findings with the WASH sector and policy makers to help lead to more wide-scale change. Later this year, we will also be lending four or five Merck employees ("Fellows") to SWN for three to six months to work on a variety of projects, including a health outcomes assessment study, behavior change and quality assurance. These employees will benefit by gaining valuable insights about behaviors in these markets. 

We also decided to partner with UNHABITAT, Coca-Cola, and NDTV on a partnership called "Support My School" (SMS), which is working with local NGO partners to install water filtration systems, improved sanitation facilities, libraries, and new sports equipment to schools across India. In deciding to join, we felt that there is no place more important to start than with children. Not only do we want to improve the health of India's youngest citizens, but we want to ensure they are able to stay in school and get the education they need to lead India in the years to come. Children are also important messengers as they deliver WASH messages back to their families. In visiting schools outside Bhopal earlier this year, the impact was clear: the children were eager to show us their new latrines, and teachers indicated that attendance was up (some students were riding their bikes five miles to school). Students from near-by private schools had even switched to the SMS schools due to the better bathroom facilities. 

Our goals in both partnerships are to increase the number of people with access to clean water and increase awareness about sanitation and proper hygiene. In doing so, we expect to see decreased mortality and illness due to water-related disease, increased school attendance — particularly among adolescent girls, and increased economic productivity in those areas where we are focused — these will be the measurements we examine and build into our public reporting. 

While it's still early days for us, we've already learned a great deal. There are so many great partners out there and projects worthy of investment. But it's vital that we focus on what we want our impact to be and what we want to get out of this work as a business. This will not only lead to positive outcomes for the communities in which we invest, but also to the sustainability of Merck's involvement in this important space. 

Editor’s Note: This post highlights Blue Planet Network’s long-standing peer review and crowd-sourcing platform, along with examples of collaboration and knowledge sharing among BPN’s members. It was authored by Lisa Nash, CEO of Blue Planet Network. 

What if there was a way for the WASH sector to unlock the hidden knowledge of sustainable safe drinking water and sanitation programs? 

Blue Planet Network (BPN), an online global platform and network of 90+ WASH funders and implementing organizations, is designed to encourage collaboration, increase impact, and promote a cross-sector focus on project results and lessons learned. This is complemented by an expert crowd-sourcing process — the heart of BPN. Members “peer review” other organizations seeking feedback on their project implementation plans. Utilized collaboratively in a safe space, the peer review process is aimed at unlocking the tremendous knowledge of the global WASH sector. After five years of peer reviewing and crowd-sourcing, we have seen an increase in member standards, discussion, and accountability. 

BPN’s WASH community began in 2006 when five WASH NGOs — recognized for their innovation and impact — came together to build a collaborative online forum to improve each other’s programs. Introducing the peer review concept was a new challenge; we knew it would take time to build a large community of NGOs and funders committed to sharing their valuable project knowledge for the good of the sector. Over time, however, these efforts paid off. Our members have shown us so many ways to use our platform.

The BPN member stories below show how the WASH sector — empowered by technology — can collaborate, share learning lessons, and continually help improve WASH sector program impact.

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  Photo by Annette Fay, Blue Planet Network

  Community Water Center (CWC) and BPN are developing a program in San Joaquin Valley, CA, to help 2,600 people living with nitrate and arsenic-contaminated drinking water. The groundwater has been contaminated with nitrates from the heavy agricultural pesticides used, and from naturally occurring arsenic. Project Well, a BPN member working on arsenic-free wells in West Bengal, India, will support CWC’s efforts by sharing their experience.
• Aguayuda, from Colombia, changed their local staffing plans after applying for membership and discussing staffing options with BPN members Agua Para La Vida, El Porvenir (Nicaragua), and Agua Para La Salud (Guatemala). 
• East Meets West (Vietnam, Cambodia) suggested improvements to hygiene practices of a project by Indian BPN member, Ekoventure, that reduced overall costs and improved project sustainability. 
• The Chagrin Valley, Ohio Rotary Club, a BPN funding member, facilitated the independent monitoring of projects implemented by member Aqua Clara International in Kenya by local Kenyan Rotarians. 
• “Peer visits” in 2011 were launched to empower members from a common region to connect with others in the field, suggest improvements, and train together. The Samburu Project hosted fellow members, Tanzania Mission to the Poor and Disabled (PADI), Aqua Clara International, Sabore Oyie in Kenya and Rajesh Shah of BPN to review their work in northern Kenya, suggest ways to improve sustainability, and share field experiences.  
• Gram Vikas and WOTR, Indian BPN members — and the first two recipients of the Kyoto World Water Grand Prize — have advised members on their MANTRA and participatory watershed development programs. The 2012 Kyoto World Water Grand Prize winner, Katosi Women Development Trust (Uganda), is connected to BPN through a long-time member, Global Women’s Water Initiative, and we hope to promote collaboration among these grassroots leaders. 

We have seen a significant increase of funder interest in WASH projects because BPN directly connects funders to NGOs and project communities. Although funders may be continents away, they still have an up-close look and hands-on tool to monitor and track project planning, implementation, and impact through our platform. This transparent process increases funder engagement and builds confidence in future funding and investment.  

Funding ongoing monitoring efforts is also a cost-effective way to ensure investment dollars continue to have the impact funders seek. Currently, approximately 30 funders, WASH experts and observers, and over 60 international agencies track WASH projects on BPN’s online platform. 

Through our close work with WASH funders, NGOs, and communities, we have come to understand that there is no “one size fits all” solution to address the global WASH crisis. Each community and culture is unique, reinforcing the need for an innovative community-owned strategy. By bringing people together to transfer and share knowledge, we enable them to learn what’s been tried, what works, and what doesn't, and then to apply that knowledge to their own unique context. Establishing a culture of learning within and among organizations is vital to improve project outcomes, lower costs, and increase accountability.  

Building upon experience and member input, BPN is launching its next generation online platform, “BPN 2.0,” in late 2012. With the growing demand for BPN’s WASH platform, there also comes the need for expanded reporting and analytics, more funder-focused services, project post-implementation tracking, and simplified user experience. BPN will be sharing its work in the coming months with members and other interested organizations in the WASH sector. We look forward to learning from the experience of others to make our offering as valuable as it can be in our common effort to enable sustainable safe drinking water and sanitation for all.   

Editor’s Note: This blog post was written by John Oldfield, CEO of WASH Advocates. WASH Advocates is a nonprofit advocacy effort in Washington, DC entirely dedicated to helping solve the global safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) challenge. Its mission is to increase awareness of the global WASH challenge and solutions, and to increase the amount and effectiveness of resources devoted to solving the problem around the developing world. For more information, visit www.WASHadvocates.org.  

“Forty years ago today, Apollo 16 landed on the moon… By anyone's standards it was a triumph of science, technology, and political will. I remember so many of us thinking that if humankind can do this, what could humankind NOT accomplish?” UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake continued on April 20 at the Sanitation and Water for All High Level Meeting in Washington, DC: “… and yet today, over 1.1 billion people still practice open defecation because they don't have access to the most basic sanitation facilities… If two generations ago we could land men on the moon, we can and must also afford people here on earth two of their most basic human rights — safe water and basic sanitation — because until we do, development progress will falter."

On April 19-20, 2012 in Washington, DC dozens of finance ministers and water ministers from throughout the developing world gathered to make stronger commitments to solving the WASH challenge in their respective countries. They were joined at the meeting by development cooperation ministers from donor countries, including the USAID Administrator Raj Shah. During the event, Administrator Shah made history by announcing that the U.S. government has joined this global partnership aimed at universal coverage of safe drinking water and sanitation.  

Why does this fundamental global safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) challenge continue to exist today? The most intriguing answer is when people respond: “The problem is not solved because of a lack of political will.” Once that statement is made, no matter how accurate it is, the conversation typically dies, because most people look at politicians as part of the problem, not part of the solution, and strong political will often proves elusive. 

This is why I consider the Sanitation and Water for All High Level Meeting arguably the most important meeting of 2012: political will is what we saw in Washington, DC on April 19-20. And it is political will that leads to sustainable WASH programs implemented at scale community by community, country by country.

The WASH grantmaking community, both foundations and corporate leaders, can take away a few lessons from the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) Partnership and its April meeting:

• Strengthening the evidence base of success is important. The Sanitation and Water for All process isn’t simply for finance ministers and other high-level political leaders to dialogue. The SWA Partnership focuses on strengthening the evidence base of success in the global WASH sector, and using that evidence base to strengthen political will. Political leaders country by country need to hear about WASH from their people. Those political leaders also need to understand how they can help solve the challenges. The SWA process facilitates both, and donors looking for ”exit strategies” need to think more consciously about what it takes to inspire a government at any level to scale up your work. The exit strategy for the most successful WASH programming is “Get the job done,” and universal coverage of WASH requires the highest levels of political support.
• Better alignment is key. Too often, donor efforts are not aligned with governments, NGOs, or other donors; this can lead to unsustainable, inappropriate, and/or duplicative programming. Members of the SWA include bilaterals (e.g. U.S., U.K., Netherlands, Japan, Australia), dozens of developing countries, multilaterals like the African Development Bank, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Many have joined the SWA in part to make sure their assistance is better aligned both with the need and with the actual plans and progress that developing countries are making. SWA partners also aim to make sure their assistance is better coordinated with each other's plans as donors as well. An example of this approach is the support that the Gates Foundation provides to the Water and Sanitation Program, a private partnership administered by the World Bank.
• Linkages between economic growth and WASH need to be better quantified and communicated. What gets the attention of finance ministers? Arguably, it is not the morbidity and mortality associated with unsafe water and inadequate sanitation, but rather the increased productivity that safe, affordable, and sustainable water and sanitation offer an economy. The World Health Organization estimates that each dollar invested in WASH returns on average eight dollars in increased economic productivity and decreased health care costs. But how many of us know that inadequate sanitation cost India the equivalent of 6.4% of its GDP in 2008? Or that it cost Bangladesh 6.3% of its GDP in 2007? How many of us incorporate this and other cross-sectoral linkages into both our programs and our communications efforts as effectively as we could? 

Beyond the SWA Partnership, many other ongoing efforts illustrate these same points and deserve a closer look: strengthening community water board associations in Latin America; building the capacity of national and sub-national civil society WASH networks in Africa; donors and nonprofits partnering early and directly with mayors in developing countries instead of just inviting them to ribbon-cutting ceremonies; and bringing creative and leveraged business and financial approaches into the water and sanitation sector. 

Clearly donors (in Europe, the United States, and beyond) need to continue direct funding of safe drinking water and sanitation programs around the world. However, government and private donors also need to increase their financial and technical support for initiatives that strengthen the capacity of developing countries to solve the water and sanitation challenges themselves. 

If, as Tony Lake says, we can send a man to the moon forty years ago, we as a planet can certainly solve our water challenges today. The Sanitation and Water for All Partnership illustrates some of the lessons and approaches that will make the private and corporate philanthropic communities an even more important part of the solution. 

Editor’s Note: This is the first in our new “5 Questions for…” series, where we pose five questions to foundation, NGO, and thought leaders in the WASH sector. In this post, Water For People’s CEO, Ned Breslin, discusses FLOW, tariff systems, sensors, and more in response to our questions.   

If you are interested in participating in this series, send us an e-mail at: WASHfunders@foundationcenter.org.

1. What is the number one most critical issue facing the WASH sector today?

That, as a sector, if we continue to muddle through with small-scale projects, and with programs that have no chance of scale or replication, and if we continue complaining about a lack of finance and poor political will, we won’t solve the water and sanitation crisis. We need to have the courage of a comprehensive polio eradication-type campaign and movement. We are ready to make a bolder move. All investments in water and sanitation need to last, because we can no longer accept girls walking back to polluted water sources past broken handpumps and taps. It’s time we begin to think seriously about creative financial models to replace water and sanitation facilities over time. As a sector, we need to lead the world in issues of transparency with longer-term monitoring that helps us understand what works and why. We are ready for this leap, we just need to take it.   

2. Tell us about a collaboration or partnership your organization undertook and the lessons learned from that experience.

I am extremely excited about our new partnership with Akvo on the future development of FLOW. As many know, Water For People developed FLOW as a way to meet our commitment to 10 years post-implementation monitoring. FLOW is great but we were overwhelmed by the demand for FLOW by other agencies. So we decided Akvo will take this process forward. Through the process of creating a partnership, the thing I learned the most is that alignment around values, organizational culture, and vision is vital to a partnership moving forward. Challenges will emerge but we can always move forward if aligned with a bigger vision in mind.

3. How do you work with local communities to promote project ownership and sustainability?

We focus on payment and tariffs. The days of sweat equity alone being sufficient for ownership are gone, thankfully. The challenge is to develop tariff systems that finance operations and maintenance (O&M), and also contribute in part to the eventual replacement of these systems over time while ensuring that all have access to water regardless of economic capacity. But someone has to pay, and ownership and sustainability will be elusive unless we embrace the fact that payment matters. We can debate who pays all we want, but someone has to pay — someone actually has to own that responsibility. Water For People works very hard at this issue. It’s not easy but it’s vital to all real discussions on ownership and sustainability.

4. Tell us about an emerging technology or solution that excites you and that you think will make a big impact in the WASH sector over the next 5-10 years?

I love the potential of sensors in the water and sanitation sector. The ability to truly understand issues related to consumption patterns and, most importantly, functionality will be a big game changer. If sensors tell us when water systems are down, when they are repaired, and what is happening with water resources, we will be in a much stronger position to understand and respond to sustainability challenges. The one group I am watching now is SWEETLab — really good work there!

5. There are lots of great WASH resources, ranging from striking data visualizations to good, old-fashioned reports. What’s caught your eye lately (besides WASHfunders, of course)?  

The one resource I am inspired by is A Child's Right program called “Proving It” (discussed in detail in this WASHfunders post). It’s early stages but it is a really nice attempt to track actual users over time. The web page will show you what is working and highlight when a system is down (leading to a reduction in the number of beneficiaries). This is a big step and should be supported when talking about aid transparency and all. 

We are launching something called “Re-Imagining Reporting” in August at Stockholm Water Week. May be of interest for people as well. To follow the progress, keep track of our tweets via @NedBreslin and @waterforpeople.

Credit: WaterAid / Joshua Briemberg

Editor’s Note: This post was authored by Libby Plumb, senior communications advisor for WaterAid in America. A version of it originally appeared here. In a previous post in honor of International Women’s Day, Libby reflected on the role of women in the WASH crisis through photos. 

Joshua Briemberg, WaterAid's Country Representative in Nicaragua, discusses the launch of WaterAid’s Nicaragua program, the organization's first foray into Latin America, and outlines future plans for helping some of the country's poorest, least accessible and largely indigenous communities gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene.

Why did WaterAid decide to work in Nicaragua?
Nicaragua is considered the second poorest country in the region after Haiti with low levels of access to education, healthcare, water and sanitation, especially amongst the indigenous population in rural areas. 

In addition to almost 20 years of war and armed conflict, Nicaragua has suffered a succession of debilitating disasters including a large earthquake in 1972 and hugely destructive hurricanes in 1988, 1998 and again in 2008, which damaged the economy and social fabric. Where communities live without access to safe water and sanitation, water-related diseases are exacting a huge toll on families' health, keeping children out of school and stifling chances of economic growth.  

Which area of the country are you working in?
We work in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region on the Caribbean Coast. It is a remote, isolated region that is hard to access — only one road comes here! The area has been subject to various enclave economies, such as mining, logging, fishing and lobster catching, but most of the wealth leaves the region and the majority of people here are very poor. There are many subsistence farmers. Just one in five of the 300,000-strong population has access to safe water and sanitation. Very few organizations have worked in this tropical rainforest region, with most focusing their programs in the northern and central mountainous regions of the country.

Credit: WaterAid / Joshua Briemberg

Who suffers most from lack of access to water and sanitation?
Infants are the most vulnerable to diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe water and sanitation. I recently visited a community where a three-week-old baby had just died from water-related diseases.  It's often hard to tell just how many infants die as many births aren't registered or deaths aren't reported. While access to official healthcare is low, a network of local volunteers has helped to lower infant mortality by distributing oral rehydration salts. However, many children are frequently too ill with water-related diseases to attend school.  

The task of water hauling usually falls to women and girls. This exhausting work stops women from doing other activities like agricultural work and causes girls to miss school. They also face the risk of violence while collecting water from isolated riverside locations.  

Where do people get their water from?
Typical water sources are surface water supplies like small rivers or creeks, which vary greatly in both quality and quantity on a seasonal basis. During the rainy season the rivers become flooded and full of sediment, so the water is very dirty. Collecting water from raging rivers can also be very dangerous. The water is increasingly contaminated by the expansion of cattle ranching and poor migrant communities living upstream without sanitation facilities. 

Some people have set up rudimentary systems to catch rainwater from their roofs during the rainy season. Improving the design of these to make them safer and more effective is one of WaterAid's aims. There are also hand-dug wells, but they suffer from the lack of maintenance and were often poorly constructed; many dry up in the dry season. 

Credit: WaterAid / Joshua Briemberg

What has WaterAid done to date?
Our priority to start with has been to help communities to improve or repair existing water points that are unsafe or broken. We have been training communities to install, maintain and repair rope pumps, a simple type of water pump that although based on an ancient concept was first reintroduced and modernized in Nicaragua and is now in use in many WaterAid programs around the globe. In this region of Nicaragua there is not a ready source of spare parts or knowledge about the pumps, so we are helping to establish robust management and maintenance systems. 

Through the vocational training of pump mechanics we're setting up people with skills they can use professionally, so as well as securing people's access to safe water, we're giving local business initiatives a boost. 

How will WaterAid help communities get water?
Together with active community participation we will map the water and sanitation needs so we know where to prioritize our assistance. We will develop prototype models of low cost and accepted water technologies — rainwater harvesting systems, hand-dug wells, rope pumps, claypot filters — and help communities with the construction work as well as setting up long-term maintenance plans. Sustainability of our work is a key concern — we are considering how to make technologies more resilient to threats such as natural disasters and vandalism.

Tell us about WaterAid's sanitation work.
We will help families to build what are locally known as eco-toilets. They are pour-flush toilets integrated into the home that are connected to septic tanks and infiltration fields. It's important to us that the toilets are in people's homes as this means that people less able to leave the home, such as the elderly or people with disabilities, will be able to benefit.

In the town of Puerto Cabezas (also known as Bilwi) we are planning to market a range of sanitation options, with finance offered through a micro-credit scheme, so that residents can pay back the costs of their new toilets in installments over time.

As well as improving health, sanitation gives people dignity and pride in their surroundings. Our sanitation programs in schools will help create healthier and more pleasant environments there, which should encourage children to attend school more often. 

Last month, the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) publicly released new country-level data on the proportion of the population using an improved drinking-water source and the proportion of the population using an improved sanitation facility. 

We’re pleased to report that WASHfunders has added the 2010 JMP data as a new overlay to its funding map, giving site users the most up-to-date contextual information about water and sanitation needs. Indicators at the country level, as well as urban and rural breakdowns, are provided. Simply go to the “Indicators” tab on the WASHfunders funding map and click on the desired indicator.

For an in-depth analysis of trends related to water and sanitation, take a look at JMP’s recently released report, Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: 2012 Update. 

On a separate, but related note, last week more than 20 leading WASH organizations and thought leaders participated in a twitter chat on monitoring and evaluation, organized by WASHfunders and hosted by Ned Breslin of Water for People and Susan Davis of Improve International. Participants exchanged ideas and resources on M&E issues specific to the WASH sector. In case you missed it, the full transcript can be found here. You can also follow us on twitter via @WASHfunders.

Are there other economic, health, or social indicators that inform your work on water, sanitation, and hygiene? Let us know at washfunders@foundationcenter.org so that we can continue to make site enhancements that meet your information needs.

Merck and the Safe Water Network have announced a three-year, $1.5 million partnership to increase access to safe water and reduce the effects of water-borne disease in impoverished communities in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Building on SWN's field activities in the region, the collaboration is designed to provide clean water to additional villages in Andhra Pradesh and develop demand-generation programs that increase household usage. The initiative addresses a critical need in India, where an estimated 70 percent to 80 percent of disease is related to water contamination and poor sanitation and where more than a hundred and twenty thousand children under the age of five die each year from rotavirus diarrhea.

Together, Merck and Safe Water Network also will work to increase awareness of the importance of clean water and hygiene and drive behavior change. The campaigns will be assessed to measure their impact on safe water usage and improved health.

"Clean water is fundamental to the world's health and to Merck's mission of fighting disease and helping the world be well. Nowhere is this more true than in India, which faces a significant challenge related to clean water," said K.G. Ananthakrishnan, managing director of Merck in India. "Our partnership with Safe Water Network is a testament of our commitment to help reduce the impact of water-related illness in India and of Merck's overall efforts to improve health globally."

Source: “Merck and Safe Water Network Launch Initiative to Improve Water Access and Help Reduce the Impact of Water-Borne Disease in India.” Merck Company Press Release 3/20/12.

For additional WASH-related philanthropy news, see the news feed on WASHfunders.org.

Editor’s Note: In this post, Susan Davis reflects on the theme of World Water Day — water and food security — and the implications it has for all of us. Susan is the executive director of Improve International, an organization focused on promoting and facilitating independent evaluations of WASH programs to help the sector improve. She has more than 13 years of experience in international development and has evaluated WASH and other programs in 15 developing countries. A version of this post originally appeared here.

Credit: Aguayuda / Sabrina Zimmerman

I was in DC last week for World Water Day celebrations, which focused on this year’s theme Water & Food Security. (The UN celebrated the first World Water Day on March 22 1993, and each year selects a theme highlighting an aspect of freshwater. Read about past themes here.) I took advantage of the beautiful weather to see the early blooming cherry blossoms and visit the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. One of MLK’s quotes from 1964 caught my eye: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”

“Food security exists when all people at all times have both physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for an active and healthy life” (1996 World Food Summit). Sadly, 48 years after MLK’s Norway speech, Water and Food Security is still a relevant theme as world headlines continue to warn of drought, malnutrition, famine, and exponentially increasing populations. While one day a year might not seem like enough to make a difference in such enormous problems, World Water Day has become a prompt for governments, foundations, charitable organizations, and individuals to come together at a variety of events around the world to raise awareness, discuss solutions, and make serious commitments.

Many of us drink a glass or two of water with each of our three meals. But how many of us think about the intimate relationship between water and food?

We need a great deal of water to grow and process our food, whether it’s plant or animal. Without water we can’t grow most food sources; and without safe water we can lose many of the vital nutrients from that food. This connection is driving concerns about the world’s food supply, particularly with increasing water scarcity and changing weather patterns, but is especially critical and pressing for people in developing countries. According to the Food Security Information for Action Practical Guides, investment in water is a key part of the strategy for addressing food security problems.

While the water-food connection sounds simple, there are many complicating issues. To understand how to help, we must explore what this means on the individual, community, and global levels.

At the individual level

Nutrition is a delicate issue for many in the developing world, especially children under five. Mothers need these children to hold onto every last calorie. Yet drinking unsafe water can lead to diarrhea, which leads to malnutrition, which can lead to diarrhea, completing the vicious cycle. Eating food contaminated by unwashed hands can also contribute, ironically, to malnutrition. A study by Luby, et al. found that children living in households where food preparers washed their hands with just water before handling food were less likely to have diarrhea than children living in households where food preparers did not wash their hands at all. This suggests that hand-washing, even without using soap, promotes health. The implication for WASH project planning is that hygiene promotion is absolutely critical, with a focus on incremental changes in behavior over time: washing with water is good, washing with soap is even better.

Women and girls are usually tasked with fetching water for their families. The water is heavy, and they may have to walk up to 6 kilometers per day, sometimes in rugged terrains. It’s estimated that, around the world, women and girls spend 200 million hours each day collecting water. Subsistence farmers or others on the edge of food insecurity shouldn’t need to use precious calories just to fetch water. Various studies show the longer it takes to fetch water, the less water people are likely to bring home and consume (see chart). If families have only a very small amount of water, they will often prioritize it for drinking and cooking, not for washing hands or watering gardens. Thus, WASH project planners need to consider the convenience of water points to help stop the cycle of malnutrition.

Data source: WHO & UNICEF 2005 Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation

At the community level

In my supermarket, I can find fruit and vegetables from many countries, no matter the season. But for people living on less than $2 a day, especially in rural areas, food and water can only be obtained seasonally and locally. This leads to very limited diets, both in quantity and nutritional quality. One of the under-appreciated benefits of a water supply system is that families can use the additional water to maintain small gardens and to hydrate animals. As a result, they gain access to varied food sources, which can improve nutrition and relieve some of the dependence on a single food source. Furthermore, families might be able to supplement their incomes by growing and selling coffee, rice, or meat, which often require water for processing as well. This is why planning for water systems (capacity and distribution) should consider multiple uses of water beyond drinking. (The Multiple Use Water Services Group just published guidelines here.) Using household meters and charging fees based on the amount of water used can both encourage conservation and help identify leaks quickly.

More and more WASH implementing organizations are also thinking about how to help farmers — subsistence and commercial — avoid polluting the water sources they depend on with pesticides. Other efforts are focusing on helping farmers grow more “crop per drop” — for example, iDE’s drip irrigation — or grow drought resistant crops. Watershed protection programs also encourage communities to keep trees and plant new ones to prevent topsoil from going into streams and rivers. To ensure a sufficient and safe source of water over time, WASH project planners should consider including integrated water resource management (IWRM) (like the Global Water Initiative has) or partnering with a group familiar with the practice. According to Steph Ogden (who was the IWRM fellow with Water for People last year), organizations doing IWRM best are small, local organizations based around a watershed (large or small), such as the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization. Steph says, “They’re looking out for water access, environmental sustainability, sanitation, livelihoods of their own neighbors in the watershed region with a real understanding of how they’re all (and all of those components are) connected.” Other resources on the topic include the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC), or International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

On the global level

Inexorably, the world’s population is growing. It is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. Those people will need to eat food and drink safe water, on the order of 100 percent more globally by 2050. Meat consumption (which uses a great deal of water) is increasing in population-dense countries like China. Besides the 2-4 liters of drinking water per person, it takes 2,000-5,000 liters of water to produce one person’s daily food. “To secure food for everybody, we first need to secure water,” says the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN. The implications for all of us as individuals might be eating less meat.

Almost half a century after MLK envisioned food security, The Stockholm Statement calls on leadership at all levels of government that will participate at the Rio+20 Summit to commit to achieving “universal provisioning of safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and modern energy services by the year 2030″ and to adopt intervening targets to increase efficiency in the management of water, energy, and food. Audacious? You bet! And since we all eat, drink, and use energy, each one of us has a part to play.

For more information and educational materials, see the UN World Water Day site.

Editor’s Note: This guest post chronicles one organization’s commitment to transparency and accountability through the development of an exciting new platform. Eric Stowe, founder and executive director of a child’s right, shares the story of Proving It and the lessons learned along the way.

In recent years a voice has become increasingly audible within the WASH sector — a voice calling for honesty about failure, transparency in reporting, and sustainability of solutions. It didn't emerge because failure swiftly became popular, but because failure appropriately became relevant.

When water interventions fail, they fail people. While we can and do discuss failure rates, we’re really not talking about “rates” at all; we’re talking about children and adults whom we have failed, collectively.

In the work of A Child’s Right — cleaning contaminated water to make it safe for drinking, for kids — we take failure as seriously as we take success. Our gold standard is this: we will not serve a glass of water to any child that we wouldn’t serve to our own children. If it isn’t water we would like to drink, then it isn’t water we should be serving to others. For this reason, we simply must have the technical tools — and the organizational culture — to support identification of failure and effective responses.

We therefore aspire to vigilance in monitoring, maintenance, and success. To these ends, we set about devising a means to monitor progress at every site where we work. We envisioned a day when every project we undertook could be tracked online — starting with a GPS point on a map, continuing with recurring verification that safe water is flowing, and culminating in the display of all monitoring and maintenance activity, as well as of updated photos and field notes. In short, we came to view “the big day” when water first flowed clean as the beginning of our work — not the end of it.

We realized our vision in October 2011, when we rolled out the first iteration of this new online platform called Proving It. (To learn more about Proving It, read the overview here.) It allows donors, and the public, to see systematically updated water quality test results, service records, comments from beneficiary communities, and more. In one place, interested parties can now track well over five hundred sites, a number that is growing steadily. With operations projected in sixteen countries, on two continents, within eight years, such tracking is both an urgent priority and a distinct challenge. We are proud of where Proving It stands, currently, but it is only a start. We are actively ideating on 2.0, and beyond.

Proving It was first developed for internal management purposes — to allow us to monitor, evaluate, and measure our own performance. Midstream in development, we asked ourselves: “What would happen if we made our internal database fully viewable to the public?” which then led us to consider: “What if donors learned of problems or failures at the same time we did?”

These questions stayed with us, and forged our commitment to rigorous honesty. If a project fails, the donor now learns at the same time we do. And if a water system goes down, it stops issuing water that a “beneficiary” could unknowingly drink. We have found this to fundamentally reframe conversations with donors — and even our shared view of philanthropy itself. Now that donors can track their gift over time (i.e., minimum ten years) and learn of the challenges we face in real time, they can participate in the act of insisting that water solutions are only solutions if they continue to work over time.

It is our vision that Proving It will be created in open source, and ultimately be white-labeled for use by anyone in the sector who shares a rigorous commitment to transparency. We are currently working on plans to make it so. Ultimately, we see Proving It as bearing promise for both the WASH sector and for many charitable aims.

It sounds a little funny, but we don’t want to fail at failure. We’d like to get failure right. To us this means being open to learning, as well as being rigorous in our honesty, transparency, and mutual accountability. To that effect, we welcome feedback, as well as long-range partners who would like to have conversations about Proving It and its potential for the sector.

It's World Water Day. And for those of us lucky enough to be able to take clean drinking water for granted, the numbers can be difficult to wrap our heads around. Nearly one billion people globally do not have access to safe water and more than two billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. The implications for the physical, economic, and educational well-being of communities, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, are far-reaching. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted during last year's World Water Day events, "The water crisis is a health crisis, it's a farming crisis, it's an economic crisis, it's a climate crisis, and increasingly, it is a political crisis."

Given the scope and scale of the crisis, what are foundations doing to address the situation?

In conjunction with its work on WASHfunders.org and this week's World Water Day events, the Foundation Center has released a new research brief that summarizes foundation investments in water, sanitation, and hygiene. Among other things, our findings show that support for WASH issues has been on the rise since 2003. Between 2003 and 2010, the number of funders making WASH-related grants jumped from 24 to 78, and that growth was accompanied by a nearly five-fold increase in the number of organizations receiving grants. In 2009-2010, U.S. foundation funding for WASH issues totaled $144 million, up from $11 million in 2003-2004. At the same time, WASH funding, having grown from 0.2 percent in 2003 to 1.7 percent in 2010, remains a very modest portion of international giving by U.S. foundations overall.

The research brief also highlights the top funders of WASH initiatives. Among private foundations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation continues to be the largest funder of WASH programs, with the foundation's grantmaking comprising half of all WASH funding in 2009-2010. Among corporate foundations, the PepsiCo Foundation leads the way, awarding grants of more than $12 million in 2009-2010.

Philanthropic investments to address safe water, adequate sanitation, and hygiene education are poised to increase in the coming years, with several foundations, including the Margaret Cargill Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Skoll Global Threats Fund, beginning to develop strategic initiatives focused on WASH issues.

For more data on foundation support for WASH, see the full research brief here.