Listening - To Those Working with Communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to Achieve the UN Goals for Water and Sanitation

This publication from the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council proposes that current approaches to issues of water and sanitation are flawed, and that new approaches based on the experiences of people working directly in communities are needed. The publication includes contributions from over 35 individuals working on water and sanitation issues across the world. According to the report, the title 'Listening' was chosen because "that simple but fundamental step is the key to ensuring that billons more dollars are not misspent in the name of development."

Contributors to 'Listening' agree on advocating a new approach: based on working with and trusting local communities, focusing on the needs of households and supporting the reform of local governments and institutions. This new approach proposes that progress towards water and sanitation goals must be measured not by counting the number of taps and toilets and dividing them into the total population served, but by recording changes in use, behaviour, maintenance and above all improvements in health.

The publication states that non-governmental organisations can pioneer new ways forward with a limited number of communities and United Nations agencies and aid programmes can bring to bear resources and international experience. But it is national and local governments - their priorities and policies, their attitudes and actions - that will determine whether known solutions are put into action on the same scale as the known problems.What has changed, in the view of most contributors, is that the primary action being demanded of governments is no longer the delivery of solutions or the subsidising of hardware. It is the facilitating of community-based action.

All contributors to 'Listening' agree that this is an approach for which, by definition, there is no single formula for success. But it can be done. 'Listening' provides details of where, why and how it has, and is, being achieved. It is about trusting local communities, their organisations, and those who work with them. It is about creating space and building local capacity by providing the kind of support that does not undermine confidence or take away initiative.

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