I love Oxford, England. Great history, fascinating architecture and the certainty of another great week with the dynamic Skoll Foundation community. Last year, Water For People was selected as a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. It was a humbling moment for Water For People, a great honor, and an award that gave us confidence that we may be on the right track programmatically. It has been a significant year for us at Water For People since I last stood in Oxford. We launched Everyone Forever here one year ago. Everyone Forever is an outcomes-based water and sanitation program that we hope will lead to better results at a grander scale (see here for details ). We had been working towards these goals around the world for a number of years yet we were unsure of the exact words, the best way to convey the message and most importantly when would be the right time to roll it out publicly. We tested our...

If you weave your way through the Mukuru slum, on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, and find your way through the stalls selling seemingly everything you can imagine, down alleys with houses made from scraps of tin, cardboard boxes, and pieces of discarded wood, jumping over shit in bags (“flying toilets”) or just shit in the open, you may luckily find Agnes. As many as 200,000 people might live in this tiny space, but Agnes' house is worth the search. Agnes is in her mid-40s and has lived in Mukuru for the past 18 years. Home. She does not want to be anywhere else because she will “not be welcomed there” as she is in Mukuru. For years she sold home-brewed alcohol and made quite a bit of money. But she had to pay “fees” to police officers every day (KES 500-5,000, or $6-60, depending on their mood and needs). And there were fights at her home and bar that were not good for her family. It eventually became too rough, and her family looked for alternatives. Agnes...

A delicate walk in Bihar, India... with a cameo from Steve Sugden

The Jalabandhu are an initiative spearheaded by Water For People–India in response to challenges we saw from our monitoring program that suggested that routine maintenance and minor/major repairs of handpumps were not effective when managed by local water committees. The Jalabandhu are a private sector, mobile mechanic response to this programmatic weakness. I have seen the Jalabandhu get stronger each year since they were started in 2009. I think there are also additional challenges they face as they expand their networks and struggle with defaults amongst some communities. I will write about this shortly. That said, this is a wonderful story about a particularly effective Jalabandhu. Mr Jana historically made ~R2,200 per month but has started to really expand and improve his business. He has grown his customer base from ~50 water points to 165 and his income will rise considerably now as a result. He has increased the numbers of communities he serves by taking over the...

Water For People and Akvo are in discussions regarding Field Level Operations Watch (FLOW), a leading data collection platform created by Water For People. The collaboration will enhance FLOW's ability to support global monitoring in water and sanitation, and create opportunities for it to support other development categories. The combined strengths of the two organizations will accelerate advocacy, funding, licensing, and training. Discussions center on the future development of FLOW as an open source platform, support of the existing product, and scaling up the tool to positively impact development sustainability. FLOW utilizes Android handsets, SMS and web entry to feed a comprehensive, cloud-based GIS-aware data analysis and mapping platform that allows organizations to track and analyze the operational status of water and sanitation projects around the world. Since its inception last year, Water For People has used FLOW to gain significant insight into its programmatic efforts...

By Kim Lemme, Program Finance + Compliance at Water For People Transparency. Accountability. Impact. These three buzzwords are everywhere these days, but what do they really mean? Buzzwords are often used because they portray the “right” message – but are less-often substantiated in practice. Theoretically if an organization is transparent, accountable, and claims high impact, it is working seamlessly and making great progress toward working itself out of existence, right? That’s theory. In practice these three words are much more difficult. Taking them one at a time, let’s examine what these words really mean and finally, how Water For People is working to change the conversation. Transparency : It is well-known that international aid and development work is complex, problems are messy, and theory is rarely, if ever, seen in practice. But many organizations choose to hide their challenges, only going public when they have a great success story to share. For an...

Share this video with others: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnNPgtx7mdY I am a big fan of microfinance, having started my first microfinance project for water and sanitation in rural KwaZulu, Natal, South Africa in 1993. But I learned very quickly in this project that there was often a gap between repayment rates and actual impact. The microfinance sector spends a great deal of time focused on repayment rates – with organizations suggesting that they are successful and impactful because they can show a high repayment rate on the loans that they made. To illustrate, MFIs will often publish statistics like 95% repayment rates on loans and suggest that this means they are great at transforming poverty and changing lives. Repayment matters of course, but it does not in any way confirm the impact of the loan. In the case of water and sanitation, a focus on loan repayment as the key (or only) indicator of success is misleading. Repayment of loans simply show that money was...

Everyone means Everyone! The politically connected and the politically marginalized. The economically secure and economically insecure and vulnerable. Those who regularly scout out international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for support and those who do not see a route to NGO support. Those who live near the main roads where development support is generally significant worldwide, and those, like this family , that live on the top of a Bolivian mountain, off the main road. Everyone!