Assessment of the functionality of hand-pump boreholes drilled through the Basic Services Fund, South Sudan

After decades of civil war, the Basic Services Fund (BSF), with DFID as lead donor, was a major contributor to the reconstruction efforts of the Government of South Sudan to develop its basic services. Between 2006 and 2012, 29 NGOs received grants for WASH projects mostly for drilling or rehabilitating hand-pump boreholes. Over 6 years, 578 new hand-pump boreholes were drilled. Borehole functionality is however a major challenge in South Sudan: The National Water Policy states that only 30-50 % of the boreholes are functional at any time. To quantify the real outcomes of the BSF and assess the impact of the sustainability-focused monitoring of the BSF Secretariat, a status review was conducted on all drilling activities carried out since 2006, one of the components being to execute a functionality assessment of all BSF boreholes. This article describes the conceptual framework, the methodology as well as the main results of the assessment

Adopting locally appropriate WASH solutions: a case study of rock catchment systems in South Sudan

Sustainability of water infrastructures is a well-known challenge especially in post-conflict countries, where communities have been used to quick and emergency-focused aid. This article presents a case study on how sustainability can be positively influenced by opting for locally-appropriate technologies and by involving communities in its selection. Considering the abundant rainfall and the presence of rock outcrops in some parts of South Sudan, rock catchment systems are locally-appropriate solutions and good alternatives to the more common hand-pump boreholes. In Eastern Equatoria State, Caritas Switzerland successfully constructed eight rock catchment systems. The potential of using runoff water from rock outcrops to ease communities’ water situation and the cost-effectiveness and appropriateness of this technology has generated a lot of interests among communities, local government and other stakeholders, leading surrending communities with similar geological conditions to request for a similar system

Building community WASH resilience: the case study of a rock catchment system in Marsabit County, Kenya

Implementing a rock catchment project entails a myriad of approaches and technological measures. The choice of approaches and technologies are a product of processes driven by the organisational culture, capacity and strategic priorities of the implementing development organisation. The approaches and technologies employed by the development agencies with the objective of improving water services are expected to align to the sector regulations. This expectation has not been entirely realised. At a time when climate risks have markedly increased, Caritas Switzerland in its effort to achieve sustainable water services at the community level, has employed technologies and approaches with impressive results. This has been possible through consolidating lessons learnt incrementally. This paper examines success features observed during and after the implementation of a drought resilience project by Caritas Switzerland in partnership with Ndikir community in Marsabit County, Kenya in 2014/15

From awareness raising to sustainable behaviour change in school: the WASH in school road map

Development organisations working in the WASH sector tend to focus on their preferred methodologies for Hygiene and Sanitation (H&S) promotion, while the sustainability of an intervention depends much more on how the methodology is implemented and whether an enabling environment is in place. In 2014, Caritas Switzerland in Kenya started a learning and critical review process on how to improve its WASH in school interventions to finally make the step from raising students’ awareness on good H&S practices to sustainable behaviour change. As a result of this process, a number of lessons on how to foster the enabling environment were learned, based on which the WASH in school road map was developed. This article presents, for each phase of the WASH in school road map, the main lessons learned and how they have been implemented in Kenya

A case study of the sustainability-focused monitoring of the Basic Services Fund (2006-2012) in South Sudan

After decades of civil war, the Basic Services Fund (BSF) with DFID as lead donor, was a major contributor to the reconstruction efforts of the Government of South Sudan to develop its basic services, including improving access to safe water. Between 2006 and 2012, 29 NGOs received grants to improve water supply in the most remote areas of the country. In a post conflict context, sustainability of interventions is often a challenge: the BSF Secretariat took therefore an active role in guiding NGOs towards a more consistent, efficient and sustainable way of implementing WASH projects. Recommendations provided focused on sustainability with the aim to move away from intensive, short-term initiatives inspired by humanitarian concerns to long-term and better planned recovery projects. BSF being recognized as a successful funding mechanism, this article describes the sustainability-focused monitoring approach of the BSF Secretariat, and highlights the main lessons learned