Accelerating Sustainable Wash Services Project

Bangladesh has still a long way to go to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of providing universal access to clean water and sustainable sanitation by 2030. The World Bank recently completed a study, the WASH Poverty Diagnostic, which examines the remaining challenges in ensuring access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene. The findings show that over 40 percent of all improved water sources in Bangladesh, that water which comes from a manmade structure, are contaminated with E. coli bacterium, a marker of fecal contamination and a cause of diarrheal diseases.

Bangladesh’s groundwater also sometimes contains arsenic. While much progress has been made in moving people away from using contaminated groundwater, about 26 percent of drinking water sources across the nation contain naturally-occurring levels of arsenic. Though most people have access to a toilet, 40 percent of the population use shared, rudimentary sanitation facilities. Only 28 percent have a hand washing station equipped with soap and water. Tackling these challenges is crucial because clean water and sustainable sanitation has a strong positive impact on health, education and development. Children are dying from drinking contaminated water. Being sick often means children miss school.

Traditional approaches to tackle this problem mainly focusing on hardware support have not demonstrated sustainability and cannot meet the needs of a growing population. So we are in pursuit of changing mindsets and creating systems for delivering sustainable and affordable WASH services that can accelerate. Christian Service Society (CSS) launched a project named “Accelerating Sustainable WASH Services” across 22 unions under 5 upazilas of Khulna and Bagerhat districts. The project is being implemented by a consortium which includes INGOs and local organizations.

Previously most of the organizations in Bangladesh implemented it as service delivery. Recently CSS completed a pilot project named “Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) promotion in the selected area of Bangladesh”. After the successful implementation of the project its lessons and experience played a major role in making a bold decision to initiate a challenging innovation. The current project mainly focuses on three pathways; (1) Strengthening private sector (2) Promoting awareness and demand creation, and (3) Creating enabling environment that will lead to long term outcome and impact.