WASHwatch.org is officially launched! End Water Poverty is very happy to support this great resource.
WASHwatch is an interactive, information database which will be a critical tool to strengthening civil society’s advocacy in holding governments accountable to commitments on water and sanitation. Use it to make sure that governments keep their promises! WASHwatch.org is an online collaborative platform for monitoring government and donor commitments to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). WASHwatch.org’s mission is to facilitate meaningful dialogue on progress in water, sanitation and hygiene between civil society, government, and donors. It serves as a space for knowledge sharing on current progress in countries, and an advocacy tool as it is loaded with comments on context from WASH practitioners and helpful WASH related statistics.
Government and donor commitments to WASH are frequently made, such as the eThekwini commitments, however monitoring of progress within the WASH sector is typically incomplete, disjointed, and without wider sector comment. This has resulted in a lack of sector accountability. With monitoring and accountability increasingly seen to be critical elements of building a stronger sector, particularly ensuring functional feedback mechanisms to encourage reforms, the lack of clear and inclusive monitoring is a major omission. WASHwatch.org aims to fill this gap, serving as an online platform for consolidating monitoring of WASH commitments.
On WASHWatch.org government and donor commitments are publicly presented and monitored. Scoring on the website was inspired by the AfricaSan and SacoSan ‘Traffic Lights’ monitoring reports. Thus, WASHwatch.org supports the communication of current monitoring against commitments, coordination at national level and ‘peer review’ between countries, while adding value by welcoming civil society comment on WASH sector progress and consolidating sector information. With detailed data presenting in an easy to understand format, WASHwatch.org provides civil society with tools to communicate with, and inform, policy.
Join the WASHwatch.org community!
Providing an opportunity to collaborate is a core objective of WASHwatch, so we want to hear from you! By getting involved, you can make significant contributions to the field of WASH:
- By sharing information and analysis you can improve WASH monitoring.
- By using scores and information others have shared in your advocacy or communications you can help hold governments accountable.
- By raising awareness of commitment progress you can help inspire others across the world to do the same.
Use this as a powerful resource in your advocacy work, and hold governments to ‘keep their promises’! For example, the EWP Zambia country briefing uesd WASHwatch data to strenghten their monitoring and call for action. Download the Zambia country briefing 2015 as an example of how this data can be used in your work.
For more information visit the WASHWatch website or contact the team on [email protected] and follow @WASHwatch on Twitter.