Working with Government for a Bottom Up & Top Down Solution to

EWB WatSan Malawi: Working with Government for a Bottom Up & Top Down
Solution to Coordinated Water and Sanitation Services
BODIES
EWB WATSAN’S ROLE
PROVIDES
INTENDED GOALS
EWB WATSAN’S
APPROACH
Engineers Without Borders
1. Strategic discussion of
approaches needs to be facilitated
•In Malawi since 2008
•Non-implementing NGO playing a
facilitative role
•Provides technical support in
connecting innovation and learning
between stakeholders
Preventing
Failure
75% of
water
points
work
Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation
and Water Development
•The permanent institution responsible
for service delivery
•Provides strategic & regulatory
leadership
•Coordinator of key groups, meetings &
policies
•Needs to be in the ‘driver’s seat’ for the
Water Sector in accordance with the
Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda
•Devolving resources to district offices
District Offices
•Responsible for providing communities
with Water services
•Ensuring critical interventions translate
into long-term impact
•Provide operation and maintenance
support
•Need to become a robust service
delivery institution
•Working with severely limited
resources
•Embedded support
•Forming groups, meetings &
policies
•Team and individual capacity
development
Increasing
governments
ability to
coordinate
sector
•Improving linkages between
levels of government for a
more united sector
•Help preparing for resources to
be devolved
•Embedded support to develop
key competencies or support
project transitions
•Support for the formation of a
network of district level
innovators
Sustained
Service
Delivery
Low
success
rate for
sanitation
projects
Synchronizing
efforts
Sector Wide
Approach
(2008)
Increasing
service
delivery
•NGOs injecting funds into the system
creates false motivations and is less
sustainable if initiative requires more
resources than are readily available
•EWB WatSan therefore helps to focus
discussion on reaching and maintaining
the ideal state without additional
resources
3. Tailored support helped bring
recommendations to actions
•WatSan supported significant
innovations for sustaining Water service
delivery changes in project design by:
• Helping government and DPs to
develop specific recommendations
• Supporting them to bring those
changes into practice with
embedded staff
Policies and
investment
plans
4. All projects could use an extra
look at institutional sustainability
Regular
stakeholder
meetings
•Though all projects intend to have
sustainable impacts, additional support
should focus on how permanent
institutions will be affected
•EWB WatSan created tools to support
government and DPs to reflect on the
long term impacts of project design
decisions
Working
towards
common
goals
•A third party group that
can facilitate
communication between
DPs and the Government
• A number of coordination structures
exist
•But many DPs and NGOs are not aware
of what their sector colleagues are
doing
•Or more importantly, what they are
learning from their approaches
2. Developing initiatives that rely
on available resources only
Proper
dispersal
of tasks
Development Partners (DPs)
•Provide financial and technical support
to support crucial immediate services
for a mostly rural population
•Seek to have sustained positive impacts
•Principles of the Paris Declaration and
Accra Agenda stipulate that they require
direction from the responsible
government as to how their resources
can best address issues
KEY LEARNING
Firth, Megan
Engineers Without Borders Canada
CWN’s Student and Young Professionals Committee –Vice President
[email protected] | 1.514.836.9709
Blog: megwatsanmalwi.wordpress.com