REMINDER: VIRTUAL EVENT | WASH Within Reach? 50 Years and Billions Spent

VIRTUAL EVENT | TOMORROW, MAY 11

Dear John,

Don't miss it!

Join Circle of Blue and the Wilson Center tomorrow from 9am-11am Eastern for a special session featuring groundbreaking reporting about one of the most stubborn challenges in human history – universal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene.

In 2020, many WASH sector leaders worried that the Covid-19 pandemic would sidetrack investment and slow progress. While the signs of a potential catastrophe were apparent, the actual effects of the pandemic in delivering water and sanitation to people who need it were not as dire as anticipated.

WASH Within Reach, a project by the Wilson Center and Circle of Blue, investigates WASH services, financing, and resiliency over the last 50 years. In interviews with dozens of authorities on five continents, and months of research, the Wilson Center and Circle of Blue unravel the complexity of a global sector that now spends over $20 billion a year and is on its way to achieving one of the great breakthroughs in human well-being.

RSVP and Add To Your Calendar Here

Not only do we hope you will RSVP for the event, but we encourage you to take the time to extend our invitation to your colleagues and broader audiences.

You can find a prepared Media Kit linked below, which includes an easy to download newsletter invitation and graphics/language that can be posted to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Please help us to spread the word about this timely and important discussion on the state of WASH in 2021.

MEDIA KIT

Read the series:

Produced through a collaboration between Circle of Blue and the Wilson Center, with support from the Hilton Foundation.

Fenosa, like many who live in the Amoron 'Akona neighborhood, works by supplying dozens of households and businesses with well water. Location: Amoron 'Akona, Antananarivo, Madagascar. Photo © Tsilavo Rapiera – www.tsilavorapiera.com / www.arikamedia.com

Pandemic Brings WASH To Rare Inflection Point

Circle of Blue reports that the WASH world is at a rare inflection point. Pursuing WASH outcomes in the 20th century essentially meant that outside funders spent a fortune on water supply and sanitation equipment in developing regions. Though progress was made, a lot of pumps, pipes and toilets failed.

Frustrated by the intractable impediments—many of which were of their own making—funders and practitioners have spent much of the last decade tossing aside those clumsy approaches and have replaced them with disciplined business strategies and systems management that stress earned revenue streams, data collection and analysis, and measurable performance.

A child in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar refugee camp washes her hands in a newly installed wash station as a precaution for Covid-19. Photo © United Nations Development Programme.

Innovation in Financing Brightens WASH Galaxy

People devoted to financing water, sanitation and hygiene in developing nations worried for much of 2020. Utility customers stopped paying their water bills. Funders altered their priorities. Heads of state turned their attention to other virus-related emergencies.

Even as the official numbers seemed to point to a potential catastrophe, the actual effects of the pandemic on delivering water and sanitation to people who needed it were not nearly as dire.

Universal WASH Gains Traction Even as Hand Pumps Lose Ground

Well over 1 billion people have gained access to clean water since India Mark II and Afridev hand water pumps went into widespread operation in the 1980s. That's success. But they are ticklish to manage. According to various studies, between 25 percent to 40 percent of the installed pumps no longer work due to weak community maintenance programs, corrosion, failed parts, and poor well construction.

Because of that, the Mark II and Afridev pumps are stirring another dispute: Could the "death of the hand pump," as the Dutch think tank IRC suggests, be at hand?