Towards Better Programming: A Sanitation Handbook

Towards Better Programming: A Sanitation Handbook

Book Title: Towards Better Programming: A Sanitation Handbook

Publication: A publication of UNICEF/Programme Division Water, Environment and Sanitation ID No. UNICEF/PD/WES/98-3

Excecutive Summary:

This handbook has been prepared to help you— working groups of professionals responsible for sanitation programming—prepare realistic and better sanitation programmes. “Better” will not be perfect, however, because the field requires continual innovation, rigorous study, and steady improvement to meet the challenges of the sanitation sector.

As you work through the programme cycle, use this handbook as a guide and reference on major topics of sanitation programming. Assessment, analysis, and action—the “Triple A” methodology—are incorporated into this systematic planning approach. The handbook will help you to explore the major questions, considerations, and options for each of a series of major topical aspects of sanitation programming. In the past decade, UNICEF has been giving increasing emphasis to sanitation. In her Mid Decade Goal Review Speech in the General Assembly, for example, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy mentioned sanitation as one of the agency’s four major goals and a field of growing importance in our global field work. In addition, the UNICEF

Executive Board has urged the UNICEF secretariat to place greater emphasis on environmental sanitation, hygiene, and behavioural change—and to allocate resources as required (1995). The Executive Board also approved a new water, environment, and sanitation (WES) strategy emphasizing the deployment of participatory approaches; capacity building; community contributions toward recurrent and capital costs of basic service levels; gender-balanced approaches; improved monitoring systems; effective intersectoral linkages; and greater attention to deprived, low-income urban areas.

The sector remains in a learning phase; as such there are no easy answers. To help you learn from the promisingwork of others, examples of programmes, projects, and activities reflecting better programming principles in action are provided in the handbook; over time, however, your own work will be expanding its content as well. Your WES colleaguesand those of partner agencies are here to help you in that process.

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