The IRC WASH team in Ethiopia believes it is vital and urgent to strengthen the systems that deliver WASH services.
Published on: 09/12/2019
IRC has been supporting the Ethiopia WASH sector including sector actors and local government for the last 10 years. We have worked from The Hague or directly from Ethiopia and since 2019 we have been registered under the Ethiopia Civil Society Organisations Proclamation as “IRC WASH” which signifies our commitment to the sector.
Through partnerships with government and other partner organisations, the Ethiopia country programme focuses on both rural and urban WASH activities where we are supporting local government and partners with WASH systems in seven woredas across five regions. We strengthen monitoring systems which leads to improvements in operation and maintenance, capacitate service authority and service providers, help the uptake of sanitation marketing innovations and promote public private collaboration. The rural water supply work in the seven woredas is in four regions and aims to improve access, service levels and sustainability for an estimated 1,735,000 people in these target woredas. In addition, we support the Somali region with a regional monitoring system as part of our collaboration with UNICEF.
In urban areas, we are monitoring sustainability of the interventions by local government and other actors including working with SPLASH Ethiopia and the Addis Ababa Education Bureau (AAEB), in helping catalyse universal access to WASH in schools for about 400,000 students in 480+ public schools in the capital Addis Ababa.
We also extend our support to the national level, where we consult and advice the Ministry on strengthening data management and national monitoring system, promoting evidence-based decision-making practices and facilitating various learning platforms where all stakeholders meet and share their experience. We are for example serving as a secretariat for the national Sanitation Marketing Multi-Stakeholders Platform (SM-MSP) where we support the WASH ministries in facilitating quarterly learning meetings.
The IRC WASH team in Ethiopia believes it is vital and urgent to strengthen the systems that deliver WASH services to reach the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets which encompass scale, equity and quality. We also believe that working with government at all levels is vital to make progress towards the SDGs.
IRC WASH is based in Addis Ababa and our local facilitators are stationed in areas where we operate, namely: Afar, Amhara, SNNPR, and Somali regions. IRC WASH is led by the country director - Lemessa Mekonta together with an 18+ multi-disciplinary team that operate in Ethiopia and are technically supported by IRC global team from Netherlands.
