Skip to main content

Supporting quality Community Engagement in WASH programming

Countries
World
Sources
Oxfam
Publication date
Origin
View original

Planning adequate resources to strengthen community-centred WASH emergency responses: an essential guide for Managers and WASH teams

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN WASH

Community engagement (CE) is a key component of Oxfam’s humanitarian approach. CE is an approach that aims to ensure that communities are meaningfully involved throughout the different phases of a humanitarian response: from programme design, planning, implementation, through to monitoring and evaluation. In Oxfam’s WASH programmes, CE is a planned and dynamic process to connect communities and other emergency response stakeholders to increase the community’s control over the impact of the response.
CE in WASH is not new, but it is different to how we planned WASH responses in the past; since CE is not only desirable, but essential in our WASH programming, there is a need for WASH teams and Managers to ensure WASH programmes are adequately resourced so that CE is possible, even when time is short.
Maximising community influence on and acceptance of WASH facilities and services is critical to ensure that:

  • public health risks are reduced and the unique privacy, dignity and cultural needs of communities are addressed;

  • communities’ right to be involved in decision-making is upheld, through honest dialogue and the provision of information; and

  • programme quality is strengthened through two-way communication, participation and feedback.

CRITICAL ENABLERS

  1. Sufficient Public Health Engineering (PHE) and Public Health Promotion (PHP) resources that allow for discussion, flexibility and creativity between the PHP and PHE teams. The staffing should be equal for both hardware and software components of WASH, as each staff member will require a counterpart. Managers should aim for a gender-balanced team and create an enabling environment to ensure female representation at all levels.

  2. Sufficient Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) staff to support in the analysis of data generated.

  3. Management with an understanding of how CE improves quality programming, willingness to be flexible with regard to budget lines and reporting based on evidence generated by the CE approach.

  4. Human Resources team with understanding of skills needed to embed CE in PHP and wider WASH work