Talks and Workshops

The lack of capacity to provide safe, reliable (improved), basic sanitation services (BSS - drinking water, wastewater/sewage, solid waste) is a significant contributor to poverty because of the human health, economic, social, and environmental effects of deficits in the quality and quantity of these services.

Efforts to alleviate these deficits cannot sustain the volume and geographical distribution of the demand for these services over time unless they incorporate the following elements:

i. Treat the three services as components of an integrated sanitation system, which must be developed as a whole.
ii. Address all the main factors that cause deficits. These capacity factors are; institutional, human resources, technical, economic, environmental/natural resources, energy, social/cultural, and service.
iii. Focus on capacity building through evolutionary systems; from community-based to centralized.
iv. Use a strategy of achieving a significant multiplier effect from investments.
v. Leverage existing efforts and resources.\
vi. Include mechanisms for self-monitoring to ensure long-term capacity growth and evolution of the system.

The goal of this workshop is to build capacity to address the lack of access to improved BSS and the poverty it causes. This is achieved through four objectives:
i. Identify the organizations and activities involved in BSS capacity-building
ii. Identify and classify best practices for BSS capacity-building
iii. Develop a strategy for coordinated actions that amplify and multiply efforts and resources devoted to the problem
iv. Develop and commit to a timetable for growth and self-monitoring of this workshop group

The workshop sequence of events:
i. Short individual presentations
ii. Breakout sessions into working groups by focus area
iii. Working group reports to the full group
iv. Plenary/roundtable on the action plan:
a. Priorities
b. Assignments
c. Deliverables
d. Timetable/schedule