WASH courses options

Q: I am looking to deepen my knowlegde on WASH and am therefore searching for a good course (online or not) or MBA in this subject.

I found the training packages on your site and find them very useful. Is there any other course/ MBA you know of and that you could recommend?

Student from Ghendt University , Belgium.

A:  Thanks for your comments on our training packages. Which one(s) did you find particularly useful?  And for what are you using them?

For online and/or face-to- face courses you should explore a few options.

A free Inclusive WASH Internet (learning sessions) is being organised from Melbourne, Australia (workshop), from 30 October 2011 – May 2012, They do a  Poorest of the Poor. This includes a webinar and discussion in: February 2012,  see more details http://www.source.irc.nl/page/67383.

Hardap dam present water level Namibia

Q: Where will I get the Water level of Hardap dam in Namibia? Question from commercial company in South Africa.

A:  We don’t have details on water levels of dams. However, I found a few relevant texts using Google:

NamWater in Namibia keeps on online Dam Level Graphic for Area: Namibia , Reading: 14/11/2011 at that includes the level of the Hardap dam http://www.namwater.com.na/data/dambull2.asp

Free resources for your doctoral work on impact of (lack of) WASH on slum dwellers of Mumbai

Q: I am a first year Doctoral Student from India working on the water sanitation hygiene, its related morbidity impact on the slum dwellers of Mumbai(India. My study design will be cross sectional. In this regard I would like to know about experts in IRC so that i could discuss my doctoral work. I am also interested in knowing about various short term courses and conferences related to WASH where i could both discuss my research and get acquainted with other research activities in other corner of world.

A:  Have you already tried the search and reference list options from our online IRC WASH library http://www.washdoc.info/docsearch/advancedsearch for your study?

I copy below selected results from a search on slum and Mumbai  that you should explore further http://www.washdoc.info/docsearch/results?lmt=20&txt=slum+Mumbai. It contains summaries and here and there a relevant quote from the PDF text. You can repeat this search and save selected references (after registering online) as your reference list, which you can copy and past in the right format in a Word file. If you want to check research results from other parts of the world you should start a search with the word ‘slum’ in http://www.washdoc.info/docsearch/search.

Materials for teaching about clean drinking water to girls aged 5-7 years

Q: I am a local Girl Guide leader in Nova Scotia Canada and am looking for ideas on how to teach about clean drinking water to girls aged 5-7 years old. If you have brouchures, games, songs etc that would be great, Jennifer Cox

A: We have an extensive Water for kids section our site with a selection of resources which might help you to teach kids about water http://www.irc.nl/page/30389. You need to explore the various sites selected by us to download what you can use for  your age group.

You should first try the UNICEF office in Canada.  I know by experience that local UNICEF offices produce local materials for teaching children the importance of clean water and saving water.

Drinking water problems and innovation in India

Q. A Dutch company wants to do research on innovative drinking water projects in India and is looking for information on drinking water quality issues in India.

A.. The Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP) (www.nwp.nl) and the Partners for Water programme (www.partnersvoorwater.nl), are two initiatives, which provide information and financial support, respectively, for Dutch water business ventures.

The following sources are useful starting points for information on drinking water issues and innovative projects in India:

• Ask IRC – web resources – India . This is a list of key web sites that provide overviews of the water and sanitation sector in India – www.irc.nl/page/32770
• WASH News South Asia – India – for the latest news about water and sanitation developments in India – washasia.wordpress.com/category/regions/south-asia/india/
• For publications and reports on drinking water issues try searching in WASH Digital Library – www.washdoc.info/ and in the WASH Resources blog with this link – : washresources.wordpress.com/?s=india (see for instance: Access of the poor to water supply and sanitation in India)

Questions on “rehabilitation” vs a well “repair” or “service maintenance” of hand pumps in Central Africa

Three intersting questions from an American journalist n the jargon used in the water sector around pump maintenance and repairs  in Central West Africa.

Question 1) What is the WASH sector common understanding of a hand or foot-pump well “rehabilitation” vs a well “repair” or “service maintenance”. To me, a rehab seems to imply the restoration to functionality of a well that has stopped working, perhaps for a long time. But I’m looking at a situation where simply restoring a still-functioning pump (Vergnet or India Mark IV) to “optimal” water flow is labelled a “rehab”. How common/uncommon or rigorous/loose of a definition for “rehab” would this be in the WASH world?

Answer:  The word “rehabilitation” has been used rather loosely in the water sector since the 1980s to mean major repair work on broken water systems, as you can see from checking the titles from search results on “rehabilitation AND pump” in our online WASH sector library, see http://www.washdoc.info/docsearch/results?lmt=20&txt=rehabilitation+AND+pump

Reducing water resources demand management policies and strategies

Question: What are the strategies and policies for South Africa that may ease water resource demands, and to what role business and government may play in facilitating such strategies?

Answer: Regarding your question on reducing water resources demand management policies and strategies and the role of business and governments,  it is not clear to me for which purpose you need this information.

So I can only give you general advice and selected information sources on our web site. You need to analyse various news articles and documents yourself.

Research assistance on water privatisation in Ghana for MSc thesis

Question: I am an MSc student at King’s College, London, studing Environment & Development. My thesis is on Water Privitasation in Ghana, its importance and impacts on urban water users (both domestic and industrial).

I will be doing a qualitative field research on it in Ghana, mainly Accra and Kumasi, from the 15th of May to the 30th of June.

I am writng to seek assistance from your organisation, in the form of interviewing some one on the said topic and any research or published paper undertaken by your esteem organisation please. Also who to contact when I get to Ghana and how to asses these information.

Answer: From a search on our home page for “Water privatisation AND Ghana http://www.irc.nl/content/search/?SearchText=Water+privatisation+AND+Ghana&SearchButton=Search I copy below the most relevant results that you should further explore. They are mainly short newsletter items:

CLTS sustainability and costs

Q. Community led total sanitation seems to be very effective, however, it is very time consuming. Does anyone know if this is considered a sustainable way to provide sanitation? I.e. if CLTS was the only way to get people to change their sanitation habits, how many people would have to be employed (and how much money would be required) to sensitize everyone in the world. I think that CLTS will not work as the only solution. Hopefully it has some compounding effect and once sensitizing reaches some threshold, people will start to see for themselves that sanitation is essential.

A. Concerns about CLTS were addressed in a paper by Christine Sijbesma:

Sanitation and hygiene in South Asia : progress and challenges : summary paper of the South Asian Sanitation & Hygiene Practitioners’ Workshop organised by IRC, WaterAid and BRAC in Rajendrapur, Bangladesh, 29-31 January 2008.

In 2009 WaterAid published a review of CLTS programmes in Bangladesh, Nepal and Nigeria.

WSP’s Global Scaling Up Rural Sanitation Project is testing Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and Sanitation Marketing approaches in Tanzania, India, and Indonesia. The project web site includes numerous studies on the use of the these approaches in these countries.

In 2009 UNICEF published a field note “Community Approaches to Total Sanitation (CATS)” , reviewing experiences in Sierra Leone, Zambia, Nepal, and in India.

 

Pit toilet sanitation design and improving salty water – Malawi

The Kasimu Education Fund, a US based 501c3 non-profit organization has been operating in Malawi for over five years to improve the education, economy and health of 5,000 villagers served by the Kasimu Elementary School. (see website kefmalawi.com)

We need assistance in two areas:

1. Water from wells has a salty taste so villagers will drink contaminated river water.  We need a method of removing salty taste from well water.

2. The school complex depends upon latrines which are pit toilets.  We need design criteria to construct new latrines which minimize the contamination of well water and the nearby river.

Your question 1. Water from wells has a salty taste so villagers will drink contaminated river water.  We need a method of removing salty taste from well water.

Answer: The most  simple,  low-cost method to desalinate brackish or salty water is distillation. In  a 1990 publication ‘Solar-Powered Desalination: A case study from Botswana, IDRC I found the following description:

“A simple, low-cost method to desalinate sea water by distillation is used in some countries where fuel is available. It requires basic kitchen utensils: two pots, one four times the size of the other, and a plastic sheet. The smaller pot is placed inside the larger one and weighed down with a stone.

Sea water is poured into the outer container up to the brim of the inner one. The larger pot is sealed using a plastic sheet and a piece of string so that the plastic sheet sags in the middle (Figure 6). This home-made still is then placed on any heat source such as a stove or wood fire, at low temperature. In a few minutes the sea water in the outer container starts to evaporate. As the plastic sheet prevents the steam from escaping, the droplets condense into the smaller vessel. Residual salt remains in the outer pot.

To conserve fuel, a still can be placed on top of a cooking- pot which is used every day, such as a rice pot. As it boils or simmers, the ‘waste’ heat is usefully harnessed.

Care should be taken to ensure that all pots are stable and out of reach of young children.”

Source: Yates, R., Woto, T. and Tlhage, J.T., Solar-Powered Desalination: A case study from Botswana, IDRC, Ottawa, 1990. Prepared by Michael Smith and Rod Shaw WEDC Loughborough University

You can find the drawing at www.scribd.com/doc/34717619/Desalination · Cached page.