Operation and Maintenance of WASH Infrastructure Webinar Series - Part I
Click on the link below to learn more about Part II of this webinar series.
This four-part series will share lessons learned from USAID partners focusing on innovative advances in approaches to operation and maintenance (O&M) of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure. Speakers will discuss their program's approaches to engineering, environmental, financial, and political-economy challenges, and aim to draw out important lessons that are more widely applicable. During this webinar series, attendees will learn more about:
- Recent initiatives, advances, and thinking around community-managed WASH infrastructure and O&M
- Innovative, locally-developed and sustainable solutions and new O&M resources such as guidelines and training courses
- The ways in which O&M links with interventions focused on resilience, food security, and integrated water resource management (IWRM)
- Designing O&M systems that consider its impacts on women and youth
Webinar #1
9:00 - 10:00 AM EST | Tuesday, March 2, 2021
LoWASH, Ethiopia
The USAID-funded Lowland WASH Activity in Ethiopia has recently produced engineering design guidelines for WASH infrastructure, with the objective of improving construction quality and making routine O&M simpler and cheaper. This webinar will explore the links between construction standards and O&M approaches, present some of the advances that the USAID Lowland WASH Activity and its partners have made, and describe proposed next steps for the project.
Speaker: Petros Birhane, Chief of Party, USAID Lowland WASH Activity
View Presentation | Watch Recording
Webinar #2
9:00 - 10:00 AM EST | Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Groundwater Management Institute, Southern African Development Community (SADC)
The SADC Groundwater Management Institute has developed a new O&M manual and training course for groundwater installations across southern and central Africa. This webinar introduces this work, focusing on the practical obstacles to rolling out O&M training in the region, and making region-specific O&M resources more widely available.
Speaker: Kevin Pietersen, L2K2 Consultants (Pty) Ltd / University of the Western Cape
View Presentation | Watch Recording | View Q&A Summary
Webinar #3
9:00 - 10:00 AM EST | Tuesday, April 6, 2021
Chris Hani District Municipality, South Africa
Success with hybrid models of O&M provision in the largely rural and impoverished Chris Hani municipality have lessons for the balance between technical and institutional complexity in O&M, as well as financial sustainability and the role of the private sector. The work has implications for financial and institutional constraints in similar settings elsewhere in Africa.
Speaker: James Gibson, Water Services Engineer, IRC associate in the Hague
View Presentation in English | View Presentation in French | Watch Recording | View Q&A Summary
Webinar #4
9:00 - 10:00 AM EST | Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Nobo Jatra, Bangladesh
Nobo Jatra – New Beginning is a seven-year (2015-2022) USAID Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance funded project led by World Vision in Bangladesh. Nobo Jatra’s goal is to improve gender-equitable food security, nutrition, and resilience in southern Bangladesh. This webinar will explore lessons from this project’s successes with the O&M of reverse-osmosis water treatment plants and financial/institutional sustainability.
Speaker: Saeqah Kabir/Rakesh Katal, Nobo Jatra
View Presentation | Watch Recording in English | Watch Recording in French | View Q&A Summary