Our Approaches

Achieving inclusive, sustainable, and safe WASH services and behaviour change requires strengthening WASH systems. Therefore, we will use System Strengthening as our core approach across the Aims. Few building blocks such as service delivery and behaviour change, environment and water resources, financing, policy, strategy and planning, gender equality and social inclusion, coordination and integration, and monitoring will be our focus. Moreover, we will work in partnership and alliance with national, subnational, and local WASH actors on other components of the building block such as accountability and regulation, institutional arrangement, strong Government leadership and community empowerment. The Country WASH situation analysis and learnings from the previous strategy implementation informs that, we will have the maximum impact when we align and balance service delivery, capacity strengthening, and influencing in our works. We will also pay equal attention to water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions across the Aims.

We will enhance our work on gender equality and social inclusion, partnership and alliances, innovation & evidence generation, and private sector engagement. Throughout our work, emphasis will be given on addressing the needs of women, girls, people with disabilities and other vulnerable people, and engaging communities and youth in planning, implementation, monitoring, and decision-making processes. 

We will shift our works to be more transformative on institutionalising strengthening systems as our core ways of working, piloting universal access to WASH in selected woredas and towns, purposive piloting of service delivery and management models, and strengthening capacity, gender responsiveness and inclusivity, working with and through partners, enhancing our private sector engagement, and increasing our influencing work at national, subnational, and local levels. We will also enhance our innovation, evidence generation and knowledge management work to maximize impact and improve WASH services and behaviour change outside of the focused geographical areas.

Service Delivery and Capacity Strengthening:

We will support the Government at national, subnational, and local levels, service providers, and communities to expand and sustain inclusive and safe WASH services and behaviour change. Our service delivery and capacity strengthening work will focus on demonstrating inclusive service delivery and management models, innovative behavioural change approaches, water safety and water resources management, and demand creation for WASH services and behaviours. Our work will include strategic planning, budgeting and life cycle costing, and supporting the establishment and strengthening of platforms for data management and monitoring for informed decision-making. We will strengthen the capacities of service providers and the Government at national, subnational, and local levels for better coordination of WASH sector actors and effective implementation of the policies, strategies, and plans. 

We will also strengthen capacities of communities, associations, and other relevant institutions to sustain the WASH services and improve water resources and environmental management. We will also strengthen our engagement with WASH sectors and high-water users, utilities, and institutions. 

Influencing:

We will play crucial role in advocating for inclusive, sustainable, and safe WASH services by analyzing the blockages of WASH policies, strategies, programmes, financing, and coordination frameworks at national, subnational, and local levels. We will use our experience and lessons learned from our woreda-wide and city-wide approaches as well as systems strengthening to advocate for sustained, inclusive and safe WASH services, increased climate resilience knowledge, and better cross-sectoral coordination. We will also do influencing in partnership with WASH actors and other stakeholders (e.g., CSOs, medias, bilateral and multilateral organizations, the private sector, and right based organizations) through evidence generation and sharing lessons at national, sub-national and regional levels. We will also explore opportunities to work with regional and global organizations (e.g., African Union) to influence change and amplify our impact.   

Partnership and Alliances:

The achievement of universal, sustainable and safe WASH services and behaviours will only be possible through collective action and leveraging the resources and strengths of various actors. We will build on the existing partnerships with communities, the Government, media, and CSOs, and expand engagements with networks, academia, women’s rights organizations, and financial institutions towards our shared goals. We will also enhance our engagement with the private sector on resources mobilization, WASH supply chain, innovation and technology, and supporting our work. Through partnerships and alliances, we will work to replicate best practices to maximize the impact and influence the sector for sustainable WASH services.  

Gender Equality and Social Inclusion:

We firmly believe that without gender equality and social inclusion, the impact we anticipate will not be achieved. Therefore, gender equality and addressing unequal power will be at the center of our approach in all actions towards ensuring universal WASH access and climate resilient WASH. We will closely work with women rights and people with disability organizations, like-minded CSOs, youth groups, and the Government towards this end.  

Across all our work, we will advance gender equality and social inclusion for long-term changes in social and gender norms and systems. We will actively take a do-no-harm approach through our implementation of gender responsive WASH programming. We will work to ensure that women, girls, youth, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups are included in planning, implementation, monitoring, and decision-making processes of WASH programs, and we will strive to contribute to transforming gender equality and social inclusion.

Evidence, learning, and innovation:

We will generate evidence and learnings from the successes and failures of WASH service delivery and behaviour change interventions implemented by us and other WASH actors to continually learn, adapt and improve our work for greater sustainability and inclusiveness. We will conduct action research in collaboration with others to generate evidence on inclusive, sustainable, safe and effective services, management models, behaviour change and capacity building solutions with due consideration on women, girls, youth, and people with disabilities. 

With our partners, we will innovate new technologies and adapt contextualized service delivery and management models and technical solutions, drawing on the evidence of others and sharing this learning widely. We will do this by expanding our partnerships with research institutions, academia, and other knowledge-based organizations, investing in innovation and filling data gaps, including those excluded from WASH services. Most importantly, we will amplify our work with communities to share and replicate locally led learnings and knowledge to others for wider change at national, regional and global levels.

Generally, the CP recognizes that the context within which we operate is so dynamic and hence we will employ an evidence-based and learning-driven adaptive programming approach. We will consider the strategic significance of emerging needs and opportunities to our broader vision and mission and respond to it to remain relevant and agile.