Progress report for
Commitment for United Nations Water Action Agenda
Achievement at a glance
Since 2018 the Water for Women Fund has reached 3,495,519 people with improved inclusive and sustainable WASH services in 15 countries across South-Asia, South-East Asia, and the Pacific and has supported 9,781 women to take on WASH leadership roles within community, government, and private sector institutions.Since January 2023 the Fund has supported 11,365 people with increased climate resilient, inclusive WASH capacity and 545 organisational units with increased climate resilient, inclusive WASH capacity. Climate resilient inclusive WASH capacity building activities to support scaling include training, train-the-trainer, mentoring, peer-learning. Includes individuals (e.g. officials and committee members) that enable and support climate resilient WASH services and systems who have increased ability to take action to adapt, cope with and address anticipated and unanticipated consequences of climate change. Individuals and organisations are benefiting from improved knowledge, awareness or understanding of climate risks, access to climate resilient WASH information/services/tools, skills, confidence, or ability to integrate climate resilience into inclusive WASH.
Fund partners have scaled inclusive WASH processes into institutions, policies, planning and monitoring and finance commitments. Lessons from Fund systems approaches and contextually specific examples of scaling successful approaches are highlighted in this Fund Learning Brief on systems strengthening:
https://www.waterforwomenfund.org/en/news/stronger-systems-for-inclusive-and-sustainable-wash.aspx
519 partnerships have been established with women’s rights organisations, disable people’s organisations (DPO’s), sexual and gender minority group (SGM) groups and other representative groups.
Next Steps
Alison BakerBeneficiaries
3,495,519 people have been reached by the Water for Women Fund partners with improved inclusive and sustainable WASH services in 15 countries across South-Asia, South-East Asia, and the Pacific and 9,781 women have been supported to take on WASH leadership roles within community, government, and private sector institutions.
Actions
Through learnings from implementation and research of climate-resilient, inclusive WASH projects in Asia and the Pacific from 2023 - 2024, Water for Women’s Learning Agenda is currently on track to collaboratively answer the Learning Question ‘What does Climate Resilient Inclusive WASH look like?’ by December 2024.Three learning groups, comprised of Water for Women Fund Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Research Organisations (ROs) partners from 16 countries in Asia Pacific are currently working to answer three sub-questions;
1.1 How do WASH programs commonly understand climate risk and resilience, and what are any key differences? How can the insights generated inform existing WASH-related climate resilience frameworks and interventions?
1.2 How do governance systems for inclusive climate-resilient WASH commonly integrate consideration of climate risks and resilience? What lessons from promising practices can we share to support strengthened climate risk integration?
1.3 Why and how is gender equality, disability and social inclusion critical to climate resilient WASH?
Final products and findings from each group will be compiled in the form of a short report of findings and two videos to be used to disseminate findings and influence global understanding of how GEDSI must be included in WASH interventions to ensure quality and sustainable outcomes for all, particularly for those facing the brunt of climate change. Many of the existing global frameworks do not provide sufficient understanding and emphasis on inclusion, a pre-requisite for quality water and sanitation programs, and also for our shared global goals of SDG5, SDG6 and SDG10.