IRC and Aqua for All to support Millennium Water Alliance in second phase Ethiopia WASH program

US-based Millennium Water Alliance (MWA) kicked off its Ethiopia Wash Program officially at a workshop in Addis Ababa from 30 September to 2 October 2014. Two Dutch organisations to support MWA in the program are IRC and Aqua for All.

The new program runs from July 2014 to June 2017 with funding from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and other partners.

The MWA Ethiopia Program brings together a unique permanent coalition of NGOs – international and Ethiopian – that has reached nearly 1.1 million people in 28 woredas with water, sanitation and hygiene education since 2004.

Enabling wash service delivery
The alliance seeks to work differently in this second phase, in particular giving more emphasis to the central role of government at all levels and investing more in dissemination and capacity building to support the enabling environment for WASH service delivery.

As well as continuing previous work and approaches in rural water and sanitation, the alliance will promote innovations in areas such as self-supply, financing, monitoring, sanitation marketing, water safety planning and locally integrated water resources management.

Rafael Callejas from the US-based secretariat described it as 'working less on the way WASH used to be, but looking for possibilities to go to scale through influencing government policies, engaging with the private sector and testing innovations'.

Self-supply acceleration will be promoted by three lead partners (WVE, Care and CRS) with the support of IRC and Dutch foundation Aqua for All.

Financial sustainability
The program also seeks to use Life Cycle Cost approaches to shine more light on where money goes and how budgets can be re-balanced to ensure that all costs vital to sustainability are covered such as post-construction support.

The program will also use new monitoring technologies (FLOW) to show its progress and provide data more quickly to government, and use a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework to drive improvements in effectiveness.

Opening the workshop on behalf of the State Minister, Ministry of Water Irrigation and Energy adviser Ato Tesfaye Fuchala welcomed the role of the program and wished it all success.

About Millennium Water Alliance
The Millennium Water Alliance is a consortium of leading charities helping to bring safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene education to the world’s poorest people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

MWA works with governments, corporations, foundations, individuals, and other NGOs to advance best practices, share knowledge, build collaborations, and advocate for greater commitment to this global goal.

It’s members include Aguayuda, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Food for the Hungry, Global Water, HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation, IRC – International Water and Sanitation Center, Lifewater International, Living Water International, Pure Water for the World, WaterAid in America, Water4, Water For People, Water Missions International, Water.org, and World Vision.

This news item is based on press releases published on the websites of IRC and Aqua for All (as pdf).

More information
IRC
The Hague, the Netherlands
+31 70 304 40 00
www.ircwash.org

Aqua for All
The Hague, the Netherlands
+31 70 351 97 25
www.aquaforall.nl