Conference Training and Workshops

Delivered by: Water for Women, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, CBM Global Inclusion Advisory Group, Sanitation Learning Hub

Wednesday Morning Session

Need:

There is now abundant evidence that attention to gender equality, disability, and social inclusion (GEDSI), in programs and organisations, leads to better outcomes in water and WASH programs, achieving SDG targets and reducing inequalities in society at large. Diversity and equality of voice, opportunity and participation are critical to improving access and leaving no one behind. COVID-19 and increasing climate related hazards have shone a spotlight on the need to focus our attention more deeply and explicitly on GEDSI, and its importance to development outcomes.

To address GEDSI in ways that are meaningful, contextually appropriate and safe, we need to invest in processes, resources, capacities, knowledge and structures that support transformation at individual, program and organisational levels. Understanding our own attitudes and biases is a critical first step to supporting partners to build on their GEDSI capacity and knowledge, based on their own assessments.

The GEDSI Self-Assessment Tool (the SAT), co-developed by Water for Women and the Sanitation Learning Hub, is a practical tool that provides an opportunity for water and WASH teams to reflect on their current strengths, track progress and identify strategies to influence and drive GEDSI transformative change. The SAT is based on the Water for Women’s GEDSI Towards Transformation continuum, which provides a framework for teams to collectively reflect on and track their journey towards more transformative GEDSI practice in their programs and organisations.

Water for Women partner, SNV, has also contextualized the SAT for use by government partners and stakeholders at subnational level in Nepal, which enables them to review their efforts and achievements in WASH systems, reflect on the status of equitable, universal access to and use of WASH services, GEDSI status in households, communities and institutions, and to plan for innovative practice in strengthening inclusive WASH.

Learning or other Objectives:

This workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to:

1. Develop a greater appreciation of the principle “change starts with ourselves”, and how personal changes and organisational leadership can influence changes in policies and practices at organisational and programmatic levels.
2. Familiarise themselves with the why, who and how of the SAT and how it has been applied in a range of contexts.
3. Explore what transformative GEDSI looks/can look like in WASH programming and organisations.
4. Practice applying the tool to their own work contexts.

 Approach:

The workshop will have a strong interactive approach, ensuring opportunities for participant engagement at different levels. After an initial orientation of the tool, participants will immerse themselves in a series of ‘tool tasters’ and group discussion and reflections. Participants will emerge with a stronger sense of the importance of GEDSI reflective practice and dialogue and its critical role in strengthening water, WASH and broader development outcomes.

Delivered by: CBM Global’s Inclusion Advisory Group (Australia), WaterAid Australia, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, World Vision Bangladesh, World Vision Vanuatu, Water for Women

Wednesday Afternoon Session

Need:

Systemic change towards more disability inclusive and sustainable WASH and water resource management (WRM) requires adjustments or transformations in policies, practices, power dynamics, social norms and mindsets. It involves the collaboration of a diverse set of actors and ultimately requires change at all levels.

Addressing disabilities in WASH systems change is essential in inclusive WASH and WRM efforts. People with disabilities make up the largest minority group, with an estimated 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide, and yet they continue to be marginalised in most contexts and face significant barriers to realising the right to WASH in comparison to people without disabilities. For women and girls with disabilities, they experience compounding disadvantage.

Whilst evidence from disability inclusive development shows us that a twin track approach is essential, practitioners are often challenged by a lack of tools and guidance on how to contextualise and apply this in their programming.

Disability inclusion is central to Water for Women’s efforts towards transformative WASH systems change. This has seen significant achievements. The Fund set itself the challenge to ‘push the boundaries’ on disability inclusion and recently developed a collaborative learning brief on practice across Water for Women.

This workshop will contribute to, and build on, sector knowledge and learning through structured peer-peer interaction.

Learning or other Objectives:

In this workshop, facilitators will share findings from collaborative learning initiatives across the Fund as well as provide opportunity for practitioners to explore a range of tools and approaches produced and applied by partners in support of disability inclusive practice.

Specifically, the session will provide:

• An overview of Water for Women’s disability approaches and recommendations for learning initiatives for strengthening practice
• An opportunity to gain deeper understanding of approaches and available tools in support of transformative programming for people with disabilities
• Space for discussion on current good practice and challenges in disability inclusive WASH and WRM.

Approach:

This half-day workshop will use a combination of plenary presentations on overarching themes drawn from Water for Women’s substantial disability inclusion work, as well as offer practitioners the rare opportunity to ‘deep dive’ into the development, implementation and measurement of tools and approaches being employed at different levels of the WASH system. The views and experiences of people with disabilities will be captured in presentations/discussion in various ways (including in-person co-facilitation if possible).

The workshop will be broken into two sessions addressing different but interlinking levels of the WASH system (i) focused on addressing disability inclusion in governance and coordination systems and (ii) dedicated to individual/household service delivery levels. A menu of ‘TED talks’ will be available for participants to select from and each will address the following guiding questions:

• What tools and approaches did the project employ to understand the problem/contextualise the issue?
• What strategies did the project implement? (including addressing attitude change and reaching the most marginalised)
• What changed as a result of this work? How did the project know?
• What similar experiences do others have in the group?

Delivered by: SNV Netherlands Development Organisation; International WaterCentre, London School Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Upward Spiral

Wednesday Full Day Session

Need: The realities of behaviour change interventions at scale raise many questions for water and WASH practitioners. How can we apply the best of behaviour science principles and a human centred design process to create effective WASH interventions on a global scale? Can we optimise the costs of intervention design by having a common design process and universal drivers of behaviours that are effective across continents? Can we still ensure inclusion in the design process locally? How can we build capacities of the country teams in the process to design future interventions? What works remotely to reduce travel costs and carbon footprint?

Innovative approaches such as the Behaviour Design Hub are examples of approaches that this training will explore in unpacking the realities of these questions. The Hub involves a behaviour design firm – the Upward Spiral team (acting as facilitators, mentors and creative resource) working with WASH program managers (acting as learners and practitioners and local WASH experts) to design behaviour change prototypes collaboratively, facilitating learning in the process. It used the Behaviour Centred Design (BCD) framework developed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) to guide the entire process. This framework was also utilised for a smaller-scale project – in SINU and IWC’s in rural Solomon Islands to bring together a diverse set of perspectives bridging academic-practitioner, local-international and internal team-external stakeholder divides.

Learning or other Objectives:

To build the capacity and confidence of Water and WASH practitioners in undertaking behaviour centred design processes.

Outcomes

• Participants have access to new methods and tools for use in a BCD process or other behaviour change program design
• Participants have a new awareness, through examples, of the diversity of WASH behaviours that can be approached through a BCD lens.
• Participants can identify issues in scale that might be addressed in their own context, and what the challenges might be.

Delivered by: University of Leeds, University of Bristol, Institute for Sustainable Futures-UTS

Wednesday Full Day Session

Need:

Recent research shows that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from sanitation have been systematically underestimated by established methods used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC).  Sanitation may be a much more significant source of emissions, particularly methane, than previously thought.  Onsite containers may account for around 5% of anthropogenic methane, and overall emissions in some cities may be twice as high as previously thought.

In the sanitation sector there is a lack of understanding of the underlying processes and the general significance of emissions. Strategies to reduce emissions are not widely known, and their potential positive feedback loops with increased resilience are poorly understood.

Current investments are thus missing opportunities to embed both mitigation and resilience.  The lack of understanding of the contribution to GHG from sanitation and the failure of the sector to challenge and update methods to estimate them are hampering efforts to access climate funding for sanitation projects despite their potential contribution to both mitigation and adaptation.

In this training members of the SCARE research team will share the state-of-the-art on modelling and measuring GHG emissions from sanitation systems.  The training will cover theory and practical aspects of the topic.

Learning or other Objectives:

By the end of this session participants will:

• Have a broad understanding of the processes by which GHG are produced from sanitation systems (including direct, embedded and operational emissions)
• Have a broad understanding of GHG emissions along typical sanitation value chains in different contexts and how these could be estimated
• Be aware of ongoing research and approaches to measuring and monitoring GHG emissions
• Gain a general understanding of priority interventions to reduce GHG emissions and their contributions to both mitigation and adaptation.

Approach:

In recognition of the technical nature of the topic, but also the need for participants to be able to relate this to implementation decisions, the training will include short lecture-style materials interspersed with participatory problem solving, group discussions and debate.

Delivered by: International WaterCentre, Australian Rivers Institute (Griffith University), Institute for Sustainable Futures-UTS, WaterAid, Water for Women

Wednesday Morning Session

Need:

Water security is a critical ecosystem service provided to humans from nature. It requires healthy water cycles and attached ecosystems, and it requires recognising that water systems stretch beyond source-to-tap, and catchment-based approaches, that recognize the connected nature of water systems. This is increasingly critical as climate change continues to exacerbate already stressed water ecosystems.

Water management and WASH policies and programs are therefore shifting to embrace nature-based approaches to ensure water security. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are actions that work with natural systems and processes to restore and protect ecosystems, whilst also delivering water and WASH outcomes for humans. Many nature-based approaches are not new, and have been used in adhoc ways for many years. However, with the recognition of the need for nature-based systems and approaches to underpin climate-resilient water security outcomes, there is a resurgence in applying this concept for water security outcomes.

Learning or other Objectives:

With the increased recognition of the importance of nature and ecosystems services, this training workshop will explore the concept of nature-based solutions (NBS) applied to water security and WASH. In particular, we will:

• Explore how natural processes underpin water security, using the ADB Water Security framework as an example
• Discuss the application of nature-based solutions to WASH programs with some case study examples
• Explore the Building Catchment Resilience program as an example of applying nature-based solutions to water management

Approach:

The training workshop will use presentations, video, demonstration of visualisation tools and small group discussions to communicate key concepts and share case studies to deepen participants’ understanding of NBS in practice.

Delivered by: Wildlife Conservation Society, University of Sydney, Edith Cowan University, Fiji Centre for Communicable Disease Control, Fiji National University, WaterAid, University of Queensland

Wednesday Afternoon Session

Need:

 Tropical coastal ecosystems support some of the most diverse and productive environments on Earth and provide millions of people with vital ecosystem goods and services, such as food and livelihood security and coastal protection. However, with over 1.3 billion people in the tropics living within 100km of coastlines, coastal ecosystems are experiencing unprecedented levels of water pollution, which is resulting in significant degradation. Many of the same drivers of declines in water quality and aquatic biodiversity, such as watershed deforestation, forest fragmentation on riverbanks, and poor coverage of sanitation services, are also associated with substantial human health impacts. Impacts to humans from poor water quality include enhanced transmission of disease through polluted water and waterways, nutrition deficits from fisheries decline and chronic illness, and food poisoning from the contamination of important aquatic foods.

Despite the well-documented impacts of water pollution on both human and ecosystem health, the conservation, public health, and WASH sectors remain siloed. However, traditional single sector approaches are unable to address the interrelated challenges of managing land-use and pollution to improve human and ecosystem health because they do not specifically address the interactions, feedbacks and interdependencies among human activities and ecological processes. An opportunity exists to motivate action and leverage long-term and large-scale investments to improve coastal ecosystem water quality by identifying the overlapping upstream drivers of poor water quality that also create significant risks to public health. Cross-sectoral collaborations can create a more holistic understanding of the watershed system and the breadth of its impacts across sectors. By facilitating both human and ecosystem health, watersheds can serve as a focal area for place-based management interventions that serve to promote overall systems health.

Learning or other Objectives: The objectives of this workshop are to 1) share the state of knowledge on Systems Health approaches and 2) facilitate conversations among individuals working across sectors and in different contexts on the challenges and opportunities of implementing a Systems Health approach to achieve both human and ecosystem health goals.

Approach:

Our half day workshop will include a panel of participants sharing their knowledge, a Q&A session, and breakout groups discussing the challenges and opportunities of implementing a Systems Health approach to achieve both human and ecosystem health goals.

Delivered by: World Bank

Wednesday Full Day Session

Need:

Water is essential for socioeconomic development and it links with nearly every Sustainable Development Goal; there is therefore growing pressure on ensuring good water resource management and provision of water and sanitation services. However, water is generally undervalued, and water resources are used inefficiently. Population, economic growth and shifting consumption patterns have driven a rapid rise in demand for water resources, while 36 percent of the world’s population already lives in water-scarce regions. Water pollution resulting from human activities has clear health, socioeconomic and environmental impacts, and further threatens the sustainability of water supplies. Climate change is challenging the sustainability of water resources, which are already under severe pressure in many regions of the world. Water is circular by nature; however, the water sector is not systematically included in circular economy strategies. The World Bank initiative, “Water in Circular Economy and Resilience” (WICER), shows that both low-income and high-income countries can benefit from Circular Economy strategies to make the water and sanitation sectors more sustainable and resilient.

There is a need to rethink urban water through the circular economy and resilience lenses to tackle present-day challenges and provides a systemic and transformative approach to deliver water supply and sanitation services in a more sustainable, inclusive, efficient and resilient way. This includes training practitioners of water resources management, water supply and sanitation to shift from using linear models of service delivery and resource management, to circular economy models. The training needs to include an understanding of the principles, as well as ensuring practical tools and frameworks to integrate the principles into strategy, planning, design and operation.

Learning or other Objectives:

Through this workshop participants will develop an understanding of circular economy and resilience principles as applied to the water sector, and how to apply the World Bank WICER Framework. More specifically the workshop will give participants knowledge and skills to:

• Incorporate circular economy and resilience principles in policies and strategies, planning, investment prioritization, and design and operations
• Adapt the WICER framework to local conditions
• Identify pathways towards circular economy and resilience

The expected outcomes for participants applying the skills learned will be to:

• Deliver resilient and inclusive services
• Design out waste and pollution
• Preserve and regenerate natural systems

Approach:

The workshop will provide technical knowledge on: (i) the principles of circular economy and resilience, (ii) the application of the WICER framework, (iii) the need to consider cross-cutting issues (e.g., enabling environment, demand management, digitisation and social inclusion). It will then deep dive into the key actions to achieve WICER:

• Diversify supply sources
• Optimise the use and operations of existing infrastructure
• Plan and invest for climate and non-climate uncertainties
• Incorporate energy efficiency and renewable energy
• Recover resources
• Incorporate nature-based solutions
• Restore degraded land and watersheds
• Recharge and manage aquifers

Representatives from World Bank teams implementing the WICER program will present case studies and good practices from around the world.

The workshop will be highly participative and follow the core principles of adult learning: interactive, task-oriented, project-based, and social.

Delivered by: Upward Spiral, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, International WaterCentre/Griffith University

Wednesday Full Day Session

Need:

The concept of Water Security is widely used in the Water sector: within rural/urban WASH, Irrigation, Water Resource Management. Within these “sub-sectors”, water security is presented as the overarching ambition by many different organisations, yet there is no uniform way to measure this at the user level. Unlike the global guidance that JMP developed for WASH which can be used across sub-sectors, there is not such equivalent. This means that we cannot evaluate whether there has been progress on water security and even less so, whose water security has been improved and who is lagging behind.

Within this workshop we will be working with the UN definition of water security: “the reliable availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks”. This means we essentially distinguish 4 dimensions of water security:

1. Water for different uses in quantity, quality, accessibility, and reliability
2. Clean living environment (free from pollution and with good hygiene practices), e.g., pollution from human excreta, waste-water, solid waste, drainage, effluent
3. Water resource security in quantity, quality, reliability
4. Protection from unacceptable water-related hazards and risks

The workshop explores potential measurement of each of these dimensions across 4 sub-sectors: Irrigation, Water Resource Management, Urban WASH and Rural WASH.

Learning or other Objectives:

1. Share a holistic concept and measurement approach to water security
2. Ground the issue of equity into the discussion about water security
3. Initiate a discussion about measurement of water security across different sub-sectors of water.

Approach:

Whereas we hope that all participants will learn from this workshop, this is not a training with a clear-cut solution. Rather, it is a workshop where all participants contribute to the discussion. Therefore, key resource people will not be speakers, but engaged as resource people to provide feedback on the group work at different stages.

Based on SNV’s work on water security metrics for different water sub-sectors, participants will be invited to critique and co-develop metrics that can make inequalities visible. Participants will work from micro to macro level, alternately within sub-sector groups and dimension groups. This methodology has been tested before in a group of 50 people from different countries.

Delivered by: Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality, Soqosoqo Vakamarama i Taukei, Action Aid Vanuatu, Shifting the Power Coalition, Wateraid Australia, Qaqa Grassroots Young Feminist Network, Pacific Feminist Community of Practice

Thursday Morning Session

Need:

Aggregate and amplify intersectional feminist knowledge on context, conditions, issues and responses of women and gender non-binary people working on WASH and WRM in the Pacific in order to increase understanding, empathy and effectiveness in local and Indigenous women-led  development and human rights projects and programmes in the region.

Learning or other Objectives:

Ensure that participants are clear and informed on Agenda 2030 SDG6 8 targets in the context of Pacific small island States, in order to ensure clean water and sanitation for all;

Indigenous and local activists to share their feminist knowledge and praxis on WASH and WRM with the WASH Futures Conference participants, for better development outcomes in the Pacific/Oceania;

Discuss key GEDSI-SOGIESC informed WASH and WRM  issues in the Pacific including linkage to gender transformative climate, disaster and loss and damage response, human rights including SRHR, menstrual health rights, Indigenous and local programming, economic justice, food and water sovereignty and security, and more.

Key tools and resources on Pacific feminist development alternatives and approaches will be shared with participants.

Delivered by: Institute for Sustainable Futures-UTS, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, iDE

Thursday Afternoon Session

Need:

Multiple established connections link access to safely managed water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and gender equality. As development actors seek to attain the fifth and sixth Sustainable Development Goals, the need to measure WASH programs’ contributions to gender equality outcomes is increasingly pressing. Yet implementers commonly lack useable tools to tackle this complex area. In addition, with climate change increasing the operational environment for WASH, there is a need to understand gendered aspects of climate-WASH interactions.

The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Gender Equality Measure (WASH-GEM) is a novel quantitative multidimensional tool co-produced in partnership between researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Futures of the University of Technology Sydney and practitioners from iDE Cambodia and SNV Nepal. The WASH-GEM assesses gendered WASH outcomes, and it examines how these changes relate to gender equality more broadly within societies; with a mandate to explore how WASH interventions can be an entry point to wider gender equality. Most recently, the WASH-GEM was adapted to include a climate module to help reveal how climate events impact women and men differently in relation to WASH and more broadly.

Learning objectives:

Through this training, participants will gain a broad understanding of gender equality and WASH, as well as gain knowledge and skills in implementing a quantitative tool that can be directly applied to their existing WASH programs, including in the context of climate change. Participants will also have an opportunity to learn about and reflect on the implementation of the WASH-GEM in different contexts and programs.

This training has four learning objectives:

1. Situating the importance of gender in designing and evaluating WASH interventions, including in the context of climate change
2. Introducing the unique WASH-GEM approach to measuring gender equality in WASH programs, including reflections from practitioners who have already implemented it
3. Demonstrating how the WASH-GEM can be adapted to suit different WASH programmatic foci and approaches
4. Actively encouraging participants to reflect on how they might use the WASH-GEM within their WASH programs

Approach:

This training session will draw from the WASH-GEM online training aimed at WASH practitioners (https://sites.google.com/uts.edu.au/washgem/home). The training has four main components, all with interactive activities:

1. Learn: Presenters introduce the tool and explain gender equality concepts
2. Prepare: Participants work through the process of planning implementation of the WASH-GEM based on fictional WASH program briefs, and follow the steps of: planning, tailoring the tool to the specific project contexts, and data collection (role play of one small section of the WASH-GEM)
3. Analyse & use: Using dummy data, the participants will be guided through the basics of using the automated data analysis portal (https://jess-isf.shinyapps.io/WASH-GEM/) and interpreting results.

Reflect: SNV and iDE facilitators will share their reflections about implementing the WASH-GEM through their WASH programs, and participants will be guided through a reflection process through which they can share how they might adapt and apply the WASH-GEM in their existing programs.

Delivered by: Water for Women, Institute for Sustainable Futures, CBM Consulting, WaterAid Australia

Thursday Morning Session

Need:

Access to safe, affordable, and reliable water and sanitation is critical to everyone’s health and wellbeing. There is increasing awareness across the water and WASH sectors of how social and gender norms influence people’s behaviours, which in turn impacts WASH system outcomes.

Social norms (i.e.. what people believe to be ‘normal’ in their community) can be positive, but some perpetuate harmful behaviours, especially those affecting women, girls, people with disabilities and people from other marginalised groups. Water and WASH programs can unintentionally reinforce negative social norms by sustaining behaviours and roles that further embed unequal power dynamics.

To ensure positive and sustainable behaviour change in water management and WASH practices and organisations, we need to focus on addressing social norms that drive people’s behaviours. Without this deeper systemic approach, water and WASH services will be less effective, resilient, or sustainable.

Through meaningful, reciprocal, and respectful engagement with rights holder organisations (RHOs), Water and WASH programs can effectively tackle harmful norms that drive inequitable behaviours; and strengthen positive norms that benefit everyone. This has been a key approach of Water for Women’s GEDSI transformative practice. A guidance on engagement with RHOs has also been developed by Water for Women partners, led by UTS-ISF, which highlights the key drivers, benefits and challenges relating to partnerships between WASH and RHOs. Both guidance documents, and the literature and practice review will form the basis of this workshop, so that all learning activities are grounded in research and collaborative sector wide thought leadership.

Learning or other Objectives:

In this workshop, facilitators   will share evidence and lessons from the recently published social norms and RHO partnering guidance developed as part of the Water for Women Fund’s GEDSI transformative journey.

Participants will:

• Deepen awareness and understanding of social norms and how they impact WASH and equality outcomes.
• Learn how to practically address norms in programs across different contexts.
• Reflect and share learning and insights, as well as test tools.
• Hear perspectives from RHOs and their critical contributions to systems change.

Approach:

The interactive workshop will have opportunities for participant engagement in a range of ways. After an initial overview of the guidance and associated frameworks, participants will discuss the lessons and ideas generated and how they can be applied to their own work contexts. The practical frameworks and tools provided in the guidance will be tested by participants so that they can use them in their own work contexts.

This workshop will enable a stronger sense of how social norms change work, with an intersectional lens, can powerfully influence more positive, equitable and resilient behaviour change, in water and WASH programs, and the critical role that RHOs can play, if appropriately engaged and supported.

Delivered By: The Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST)

Thursday PM Session (Continued Friday)

Need:

Emergency hygiene promotion is traditionally done by distributing hygiene kits or educating people about disease transmission. Evidence shows that these approaches alone aren’t enough to change handwashing behaviour.

The Wash’Em process is the only behavioural approach that has been designed specifically for use in emergencies. This means that the rapid assessment tools are quick, simple, require few staff and target the behavioural determinants that are most important in a crisis. The Wash’Em software makes it easier to move from behavioural insights to programme design. This is because Wash’Em is the only approach that gives you context-specific activity recommendations and step-by step guides for implementation. Wash’Em has learned from many other existing frameworks. If you are working on behaviours other than handwashing or are working in a stable setting then we encourage you to utilise other approaches too.

Why does Wash’Em focus on handwashing?

Handwashing with soap can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by 48% and reduce the spread of outbreak-related diseases. In the aftermath of an emergency, about 40% of all deaths are due to diarrhoea – handwashing has the potential to make a lifesaving difference.

Who the training is for: WASH program managers

What the training is for: To help program managers design innovative and context-specific hygiene programs that are sensitive to the needs of crisis-affected populations

What the training involves: Learning about the Wash’Em approach to evidence-based hygiene program design, as well as hands-on practice using Wash’Em data collection tools and software.

Learning or other Objectives:

Trainees will learn the benefits of using Wash’Em rapid assessment tools to design hygiene programs and how to:

• Ask for informed consent
• Facilitate focus group discussions and interview-type activities
• Prepare for participant and interviewer distress during an interview
• Collect data using Wash’Em rapid assessment tools
• Analyze data collected using the rapid assessment toolsUse the Wash’Em software to generate context-specific program recommendations

Approach:

• Guided instruction on the tools
• Working through a realistic scenario, you will learn how to use the tools to collect data, how to analyze the data you collect, and how to enter the data into the software to generate context-specific recommendations for a hygiene program.
• Opportunity to practice the tools, discuss potential challenges, and engage in meaningful discussions about the Wash’Em process.

Delivered by: Sanitation Learning Hub – Institute of Development Studies, WaterAid Australia & Cambodia

Thursday Full Day Session

Need:

Government leadership is acknowledged as essential to reach everyone with safely managed sanitation. However, while responsibility for sanitation often sits with sub-national government (SNG), WASH systems strengthening approaches typically focus on national government, or on water rather than sanitation (Gensch and Tillett, 2019; Valcourt et al., 2020).

To help address this, since 2020 the Sanitation Learning Hub (SLH) has been engaging SNGs and development partners in ongoing virtual participatory research to explore practical ways to galvanise and foster SNG leadership for sanitation. Two rounds of the research have been completed to date (in three countries in East Africa and four in West Africa) with addition rounds planned in South and South East Asia in 2022/23. In each round, SNG and development partner pairs are supported to develop a case study on the change in that SNG’s leadership on sanitation. The case studies are then shared with and analysed by participants in a series of three participatory online co-analysis workshops to draw out emerging lessons and recommendations.

Despite contextual differences, clear similarities have emerged across the research rounds to date, particularly around good practices for fostering political will, use of data, and resourcing commitments. However, ways to support local governments to prioritise and reach marginalised groups with sanitation have been so far been lacking.

In this session, participants will explore, learn from and build on findings from this research as well as lessons from WaterAid’s work on this in Cambodia, where, among other programmes, they are supporting the insitutionalisation of the Civic Champions local leadership development programme within government. Participants will be particularly encouraged to consider ways to support increased SNG leadership for reaching the most marginalised with improved sanitation as an identified gap in findings to date.

This session will directly contribute to conference theme 6 on WASH enabling environments, and the cross-cutting themes on sustainability and scale, and Equality and social inclusion of marginalised people.

Learning or other Objectives:

• Increased understanding of the role of SNGs in achieving area-wide sanitation
• Increased insight into potential enablers and barriers to SNG leadership on and prioritisation of sanitation
• Increased understanding of actions to support SNG leadership on and prioritisation of sanitation
• Practical recommendations for supporting SNG leadership of sanitation are strengthened
• Relevance of research findings in other regions is tested
• An informal network/community of practice is established to facilitate continued learning between members on SNG leadership for sanitation

Approach:

As with all SLH events, this workshop will be highly participatory. We mostly avoid the use of powerpoint in favour of more interactive ways of sharing and generating knowledge. Learning on the topic to date will be presented briefly to frame the subsequent discussions, in which participants will be facilitated to explore, question and build on the existing knowledge through various participatory activities such as mapping, categorizing, ranking, and hunter-gathering. The workshop will aim to generate practical knowledge and recommendations for use by the sector, as well as to generate interest and debate in an important but often overlooked topic.

Delivered by: Institute for Sustainable Futures-UTS, International WaterCentre/Griffith University, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, WaterAid, Plan International, International Rescue Committee (IRC), UNICEF, Water for Women

Thursday Full Day Session

Need: Capacity to undertake climate risk assessments and vulnerability analyses      has been identified as a gap by regional and global development partners in the WASH sector. In an online survey of organisational needs and priorities in 2021, Water for Women partners rated capacity in climate risk identification, vulnerability, and resilience assessments as their number one need (equal to financing). This training practically responds to this voiced need and gap in the region and extends  training developed within Water for Women to the wider WASH & water resource management sector.

Learning or other Objectives:

To build the capacity and confidence of water and WASH practitioners in undertaking climate risk, vulnerabilities and resilience assessments.

Outcomes

• Participants are able to identify existing tools and approaches utilised in undertaking climate risk identification, vulnerability, and resilience assessments that can be incorporated into their future activities, and which are appropriate to their contexts and objectives
• Participants have an increased consideration of gender, social inclusion and disability within assessments.
• Participants are facilitated to share practical experiences and challenges in undertaking assessments and learn from others.

Approach:

This session will develop further online training that was designed and delivered collaboratively by Water for Women partners in 2022. It will draw on an audit of the range of tools & guidance that exist to support CSOs in undertaking inclusive climate risk identification, vulnerability, and resilience assessments, and summarise their key characteristics.  A selection of tools identified will be profiled with participants demonstrating the range  of tools available and their application together with practical sharing from partners that have applied the tools in 2022. The training will include broadly i) an introductory module drawing on IWC’s and ISF’s existing training/coursework to provide an overview and theoretical basis, ii)  practical session including cases by resource partners of applying particular tools followed by Q&A, iii) facilitated sharing of experiences from partners of their application and operationalizing.

Associated resources will be shared with participants

Delivered by: Aguaconsult, International WaterCentre (Griffith University)

Thursday Full Day Session

Need:

Over the past three decades, community-based management (CBM) has become the predominant model promoted by the global development sector and adopted in many national sector policy frameworks as part of the governance of rural water supply in low and middle-income countries. This is true in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa as well as most of Latin America and in many countries across Asia; community-management is the main approach for rural water across many Pacific Island nations. Several countries within the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development grouping, also contain large and relatively dispersed rural populations that still rely on CBM.

Since the 2000s, governments have increasingly recognized the limitations of CBM arrangements, manifested in persistent challenges with the sustainability and quality of services and there have been growing calls to ‘professionalize’ rural water provision. Largely driven by these challenges, but also in part as a response to growing expectations from rural dwellers from increasing inter-connectivity through ICT, as well as the political drivers generated by the adoption of targets set out in SDG 6.1, alternative models have been developed and tested in many countries more recent years. These alternatives include efforts to better formalize and support CBM itself, as well as household self-supply, promotion of private sector participation, both through small-scale private operators and structured lease agreements to attract larger, more formalized private companies, as well as the gradual expansion of public utilities into rural areas. Despite the emergence of these alternative models, CBM remains central for rural water provision in many countries.

Collectively, these experiences represent a concerted effort to move away from basic CBM and more fragmented approaches to rural water, which have historically relied heavily on NGO and development partner assistance, and a clear trajectory toward more formalized and better regulated alternatives delivering higher levels of service (and ultimately piped supply on premises). It is equally the case that CBM – and the need to rely on communities for some aspects of the organization and delivery of their water services – will not disappear overnight. This transition from a more homogenous policy offering to a more pluralist set of management alternatives, therefore must account for a range of rural consumers and markets, including highly dispersed communities.

Learning or other Objectives:

Participants will gain insights into global lessons on the evolution of rural water supply management and structural issues associated with improving management performance.

The session will allow participants to both learn from international experiences and apply an analytical framework to their own sector or regional contexts, to give participants insights into key bottlenecks and areas of opportunity to inform their own work as change agents working at different levels in the WASH system, including from policy to practice. The pathways, and rapidity of transitioning to professionalised water supplies will vary between places – differences in key areas of interest to the conference demographic will be explored, including the Pacific and parts of Asia.

Approach:

This session will use a mixed approach based on informative presentations and participatory group work (dividing groups based on country and/or functions of participants) to self-learn through a critical analysis of participant’s own rural water sector experience and reality.

Delivered by: UNICEF, Institute for Sustainable Futures-UTS, Joint Monitoring Programme, Bristol University, International WaterCentre, WaterAid, Water for Women Climate Change Learning Agenda

Thursday Morning Session

Need:

While advancing with the global adaptation agenda (race to resilience) and the implementation of the Paris agreements, there are important gaps that remain today in terms of how to review and monitor progress in relation to adaptation and resilience of WASH services.

As WASH infrastructure, services and systems are increasingly exposed to the effects of a changing climate, there is a need to rapidly build capacity across the sector to monitor the resilience of services and resultant community resilience, and to monitor upstream indicators of environmental and climate risks to WASH services. Together, these different types of monitoring can guide adaptation efforts and justify climate financing.

Learning objectives and approach:

The overarching learning objective is to support participants to expand their thinking, tools and practice enabling them to better monitor key aspects of climate resilience and WASH.

The session will open with a framing presentation on the rationale for improved monitoring to support climate resilience. This presentation will also serve to differentiate the different types of monitoring and their related purposes. The session will then be conducted in two parts.

National, global and project level monitoring: A panel comprising a donor, climate financer, government/utility representative and academic will then reflect on the need for monitoring, how climate resilience should be assessed (including in relation to services and to wider community) and the types of indicators they prioritise and why. Participants will then break into groups to discuss current and potential monitoring approaches, their strengths and weaknesses, bringing back critical questions to the broader group and panel.

Climate, environment and water resources monitoring: The second part of the workshop will focus on key aspects of climate, environment, and water resources that are critical to monitor, reflect on, and respond to, to protect and improve climate resilience of WASH services, particularly with consideration to      vulnerable groups.  The learning approach includes group discussion on why monitor climate risks, a deep dive into indicators, and a participatory exercise on putting indicators into practice.

Delivered by: WaterAid, iDE, RTI, IRC, Institute for Sustainable Futures-UTS, Water for Women

Thursday Afternoon Session

Need

Climate finance remains inaccessible and practicalities unclear to many WASH actors. There is a desire to better understand how to address challenges of adaptation finance, and “learn the language” of climate finance and support countries access to this funding for WASH-related adaptation. Understanding how civil society organisation initiatives focussed on WASH and GEDSI and the differentiated impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations can access funding, rather than large scale infrastructure/WRM focussed projects is also a challenge.

Learning objective

1. To build WASH practitioner understanding of how climate finance works and how to access it, potential opportunities and barriers, particularly with respect to projects assisting marginalised groups build resilience to climate impacts with regards to WASH.

Approach

This session will provide detail and discussion on the barriers and opportunities for climate funding for WASH through presentation, case studies, group work, and supporting participatory engagement with guidance tool.

Delivered by: Edge Effect & Yayasan Plan International Indonesia

Friday Full Day Session

Voices At The Table is a Participatory Action Toolkit funded by the Water for Women program that has been developed to ensure that people from all backgrounds, including women, people with a disability, Sexual and Gender Minorities (SGM) and people facing other forms of marginalisation, can equitably access, use, contribute to, influence and benefit from the design, development and implementation of Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programs and projects.

Each activity in the toolkit is divided into sections based on phases of a project cycle, with guidance on how to adapt the activity for different disability, gender and SGM target groups. For example, how to adapt activities for blind and sight impaired communities, for women (who occupy traditional gender roles) for people with physical disabilities, for people who are deaf and hearing impaired, and for various SGM communities. For each principle, theory, activity and case study, there is a small section that show how they interlink, common uses within a WASH context, and how they can be adapted for different communities and different types of WASH projects. The activities included in the toolkit are ones that have already been used successfully in the Water for Women project.

This proposed training will take people through the toolkit to better understand how to use the different sections of the toolkit and adapt the activities to ensure they are accessible for different and intersecting marginalised groups.

Need:

Achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 – clean water and sanitation for all is essential to ensure that we leave no one behind. It is

increasingly understood that all WASH programs need  to respond directly to the needs and interests of women, people with disabilities, sexual and gender minorities and other marginalised groups, especially as we pivot to undertaking a climate resilience WASH  framework that responds directly to crisis affected communities. Ensuring that WASH actors take a localisation approach, Participatory Action Research is one valuable method of achieving these goals.

Learning or other Objectives:

At the end of this workshop – participants will be able to:

• Link the main concepts and principles of participatory research methods
• Identify and demonstrate awareness of the limitations and challenges of adopting a PAR orientation
• Critique and analyse power and participation within PAR and the links with reflexivity and positionally
• Understand the basics of how to adjust the exercises to ensure greater psychological and physical accessibility for marginalised groups.

Approach:

The training will use an experiential approach.

1. Experiencing, Exploring and Doing: WASH practitioners will break into groups and will actively translate and facilitate a WASH activity to facilitate to the larger group.
2. Sharing and Reflecting: Once each group facilitates one activity, the larger group will be to observe and reflect on their experiences and their reactions to the experience with others in the training group
3. Processing and Analyzing: WASH practitioners are allotted time to process their experience and reflections relating them to the process, dynamics, themes, challenges, and successes, as well as lessons learned thus far.

Delivered by: The Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology

Friday Full Day Session (continued from Thursday)

Need:

Emergency hygiene promotion is traditionally done by distributing hygiene kits or educating people about disease transmission. Evidence shows that these approaches alone aren’t enough to change handwashing behaviour.

The Wash’Em process is the only behavioural approach that has been designed specifically for use in emergencies. This means that the rapid assessment tools are quick, simple, require few staff and target the behavioural determinants that are most important in a crisis. The Wash’Em software makes it easier to move from behavioural insights to programme design. This is because Wash’Em is the only approach that gives you context-specific activity recommendations and step-by step guides for implementation. Wash’Em has learned from many other existing frameworks. If you are working on behaviours other than handwashing or are working in a stable setting then we encourage you to utilise other approaches too.

Why does Wash’Em focus on handwashing?

Handwashing with soap can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by 48% and reduce the spread of outbreak-related diseases. In the aftermath of an emergency, about 40% of all deaths are due to diarrhoea – handwashing has the potential to make a lifesaving difference.

Who the training is for: WASH program managers

What the training is for: To help program managers design innovative and context-specific hygiene programs that are sensitive to the needs of crisis-affected populations

What the training involves: Learning about the Wash’Em approach to evidence-based hygiene program design, as well as hands-on practice using Wash’Em data collection tools and software.

Learning or other Objectives:

Trainees will learn the benefits of using Wash’Em rapid assessment tools to design hygiene programs and how to:

• Ask for informed consent
• Facilitate focus group discussions and interview-type activities
• Prepare for participant and interviewer distress during an interview
• Collect data using Wash’Em rapid assessment tools
• Analyze data collected using the rapid assessment tools
• Use the Wash’Em software to generate context-specific program recommendations

Delivered by: Asian Development Bank

Friday Morning Session

Need: Multiple overlapping climatic, hydrogeological, social and economic considerations militate against the universal sanitation technology choices in the differing contexts in the Pacific. Managing the complex trade-offs in risk posed by different technology options is undermined by gaps in the knowledge of WASH practitioners and policy makers.

Learning or other Objectives: To convey the principles that underpin the major sanitation technology choices in the Pacific to reduce overall faecal exposure risks. This will primarily focus on the principles underpinning different dry (aerobic) and wet (anaerobic) on-site technology choices for containment as well as treatment. In addition to the principles underpinning dry and wet toilet technology options, this session will also cover the principles of on-site treatment options from septage disposal facilities to package plants.

Approach: By starting with the principles underpinning the simplest technology options first, the cost benefit trade-offs of higher technology options in different climatic, hydrogeological, social and economic contexts can be better understood. It is proposed that this will lead to a better understanding of the most likely sanitary behaviours and technologies to reduce faecal exposure risks in Pacific Island countries.

Delivered by: International WaterCentre (Griffith University)

Friday Full Day Session

Need:

With increasing impacts of climate change creating a range of hazards, including increasing the severity and frequency of flood events, communities and cities across Asia Pacific need to mainstream flood risk reduction into all programs. There is currently a lack of capacity and awareness of steps and tools that can support this, and a lack of connectivity and coordination between relevant sectors.  This training workshop targets the mix of agencies responsible for flood planning and preparedness, and for practitioners & policy-makers connect with water management more broadly, including community WASH and water security. It will give participants the opportunity to understand steps and tools to better plan and prepare the risk reduction measures needed to reduce impacts from future floods and other natural hazards. As a result, it will enable local communities to be well informed, prepared and able to endure extreme climatic or other events.

Learning or other Objectives:

• Establish an awareness of the overarching frameworks that are being used globally and nationally throughout the Asia Pacific for Disaster Risk Reduction
• Adapt the Plan and Prepare components of the PPRR cycle, so it is a new focus that allow mainstreaming of all water management needs and community development planning
• Understand, through case studies, how the Plan and Prepare focus can utilise a mix of tools and to readily achieve a mix of suitable measures across national, provincial and catchment scales
• Select an initial mix of risk reduction measures that can reduce flood and other impacts and that can be trialled with colleagues post the workshop
• Identify options to enable cross sectoral capacity building and collective networking on flood risk reduction knowledge and experience

Approach:

The workshop will be a mix of:

• Overarching introduction to each session and how it is part of a key 4-part approach to risk reduction of multiple hazards
• Specific guest presentations (10 to 15 minute) on specific topics
• Ongoing interactive feedback from the participants on their in- country arrangements for a mix of issues
• Collective small group discussion and problem solving

Delivered by: WaterAid Australia & WaterAid PNG

Friday 3/4 Day Session

Need:

Reliable, relevant and timely data is critical to the performance and accountability of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) sector. Effective Government Led Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) can drive evidence-based decisions at all levels, informing planning, budgeting and resource allocation, while tracking investment and interventions for corrective action and tracking policy targets.

In Papua New Guinea (PNG), WaSH monitoring has historically been fragmented, with development partners working in silos and the government having little oversight of programmatic data. Recognising this, the Department of National Planning and Monitoring (DNPM) are progressively building systematic and collaborative approaches for the collection, management and use of WaSH and water resource data. In 2015, the government of PNG launched PNG’s first national WaSH Policy which puts in place a framework to achieve safe, convenient and sustainable WaSH services through action at District level.

At National level, the DNPM have made significant progress in establishing and institutionalising PNG’s first National WaSH monitoring system (MIS). The WaSH MIS is based on the mWater system, a free platform used for the collection, management and use of WaSH and water resource data. This is accompanied by a National WaSH M&E framework, outlining the national indicators, definitions, roles and responsibilities and standardised data collection forms that link to the MIS. The M&E system forms the basis of the subnational planning process, allowing WaSH stakeholders to contribute and use information to form data driven 5-year costed investment plans to guide service delivery and enhance water security across the country.

Learning Objectives:

The objective of this full day training session is to share learnings on effective approaches to systematically build an effective government-led WaSH M&E system. The DNPM WaSH Monitoring and planning system will act as a case study for participants to learn the fundamentals of government-led monitoring and its applicability to national and subnational planning, budgeting, governance, resilience and water security.

The following learning areas will be covered:

• An overview of the process to establish government of PNG’s WaSH M&E system
• Data to decision framework: how to effectively agree indicators, definitions and data collection process between line ministries responsibilities, development partners and INGOs.
• Information and Communications Technology: appropriate ICT selection and what to consider
• People and catalysers for change: lessons and considerations for effective start-up and scale (change makers, political champions and technical experts)
• People, systems and processes: defining roles and responsibilities for data collection, processing and use. Setting up project registration processes for service delivery.
• Putting data into practice: Developing 5-year WASH investment plans to accelerate public financing and climate resilient service delivery (case studies from South Fly District Resilience plan and Wewak District).
• Water resources and security: Evolution of the DNPM WASH MIS and planned enhancements to the system such as real-time rainfall data.

Approach:

This training workshop will be jointly facilitated by the GoPNG and WaterAid. The presenters will use a mixed approach utilising presentation, practical exercises using real data and scenarios from the DNPM WASH MIS and virtual communities, schools and health care facilities (photos/ data).

Delivered by UNICEF and SIWI

Friday Half Day Session