Sustainable services: making sense of rural water supply stories

IRC’s Triple-S project is using an innovative research method to analyse stories and make sense of the current changes in rural water supply. The outcomes will be used to help bring about sustained tangible improvements for rural people.

Anyone can share a recent experience with rural water supply, either hopeful or discouraging, on the  Understanding changes in rural water supply web page . Submissions are anonymous and will take about 20 minutes to complete.

Cognitive Edge’s SenseMaker^TM, software suite is being used to collect and analyse the stories. For a recent example of an application in the development sector see the SenseMaker^TM, case study of the GlobalGiving narrative pilot project in Kenya.

So far 371 stories have been submitted, to the Understanding changes in rural water supply web page. Triple-S will conduct a first analysis of these stories by the end  of May 2011. The web page will remain open for contributions.

Launched in December 2008, Sustainable Services at Scale (Triple-S) is six-year multi-country learning initiative that seeks to identify sustainable approaches to water delivery and access by departing from project-based, one-off and stand-alone implementation of water systems.

Related news: Sarah Carriger, Ensuring rural water services that last: Lessons from a 13-country study, E-Source, 22 Mar 2011

Related web sites:

• Understanding changes in rural water supply
• Triple-S
• Cognitive Edge – SenseMaker^TM  suite

Source: Everyone has a story to tell, IRC, 12 Apr 2011 ; Triple-S and partners think outside the box to change WASH sector approach, IRC, 10 Mar 2011

World Bank’s Water Sector Writing Contest on Wikipedia

The World Bank Wikipedia writing contest is an effort by the World Bank to engage with Universities for its Wikipedia Pilot Project (WPP). The competition is open to students currently enrolled at participating universities worldwide. First place contestants will be offered invitations for a week-long paid visit to the World Bank Water Week from 31 January – 04 February 2011 in Washington D.C.

The WPP project started in 2006 and maintains overviews of the water sector in a particular country or city, in the categories  water supply and sanitation, water resources management, integrated urban water resources management, and irrigation.  So far World Bank staff largely compiled these pages on Wikipedia, but now it is asking the broader academic community to participate in their preparation and maintenance.

The World Bank Wikipedia writing contest includes three categories in which to compete (contestants may only choose one):

1. writing an original Wikipedia note on a water topic
2. updating current Wikipedia notes on water
3. or preparing a comparative analysis based on existing Wikipedia water notes.

Submission deadline: 31 December 2010.

The three winners, one in each category, will be announced on 14 January 2011.

For more information and to register, please send your inquiry to: lacwikipedia@worldbank.org.

Read the full announcement

Related web sites:

• World Bank – Wikipedia Project
• Wikipedia – Water Supply and Sanitation by Country

New Sanitation and Water for All web site launched

Sanitation and Water for All is a global partnership aimed at achieving universal and sustainable access to sanitation and drinking-water for all, by firmly placing sanitation and water on the global agenda with an immediate focus on achieving the MDGs in the most off-track countries.

After being temporarily hosted on the UN-Water site, Sanitation and Water for All has now launched its own dedicated web site at: www.sanitationandwaterforall.org

On the site you will find information and key documents on the Partnership, Governance and the High Level Meeting held in April 2010.

A partnership application form can be downloaded from the new site. Eligible partners are: Developing Country Governments; Donors; Multilateral Agencies; Development Banks; Civil Society Networks; and Other Sector Partners. Individuals, for-profit organizations and Middle Income countries which are not off-track to meet the MDGs are not eligible to be Sanitation and Water for All partners.

WASHwatch.org: a new advocacy resource for civil society

A new online advocacy tool for the WASH sector is being developed. The website www.WASHwatch.org aims to make it easy for civil society to monitor their governments’ political declarations on WASH, such as eThekwini in Africa and SACOSAN in South Asia. Civil society organisations (CSOs) can also upload government budget data to compare how countries are prioritising the sector.

WASHwatch.org is currently under development and only accessible to registered users. Pages for Nepal and Nigeria have the most complete information so far. A public version will be available in the near future.

WASHwatch.org aims to make advocacy easier in the following ways:

• Easy comparison of different countries’ progress against political commitments like eThekwini and SACOSAN.
• Easy tracking of government budgets for WASH, and quick comparison to neighbouring countries
• Easy printing of the data to take to a meeting

Source: Serena O’Sullivan, End Water Poverty blog, 27 May 2010

Google Brings Water Data to Life

Google Labs [has] launched Fusion Tables, a powerful new online research and data organizing tool that makes it much easier to share and navigate the world’s digital science and technical archives. Fusion Tables, which was developed by Google engineers using sample research data about the global fresh water crisis provided by the Pacific Institute and Circle of Blue, is specifically designed to unlock a treasure trove of facts, trends, and scientific findings that until now have been sequestered in databases and spreadsheets not easily shared.

The new Google technology provides users a rare opportunity to share critical data, probe them, organize pertinent information and generate design elements — charts and graphs — that translate complex information into much more digestible trends. The intent is to enable online collaborators to study and understand in new dimensions the world’s complex problems — the fresh water crisis among them — discern the salient details and organize those scientifically confirmed facts. They can be used to tell stories, offer insights, and propose solutions that heretofore were largely the purview of scholars and scientific experts.

[...] Journalists from Circle of Blue wanted to understand the influence of per capita income and the availability of tap water on the incidence of child mortality worldwide from diarrhea. Circle of Blue merged Pacific Institute data in the Fusion Table Gallery with data sets from the Internet. Fusion Tables created a scatter plot that revealed a noticeable and predictable correlation of death by water-related illness, wealth and safe drinking water availability. As the gross domestic product per capita increased, the percentage of a country’s population connected to tap water increased, and child deaths related to diarrhea decreased.

Source: Aubrey Parker, Circle of Blue, 16 Jun 2009