IRC has been awarded US$ 3 million to ensure that over the next three years, 1.3 million people in Ghana will have access to water services that last: not just for a year or two - but indefinitely.
Published on: 25/04/2014
The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation has awarded US$ 3 million to IRC to ensure that over the next three years, 1.3 million people in 13 rural districts in Ghana will have access to lasting water services. The grant builds on IRC’s groundbreaking work to support the Ghanaian government’s ability to deliver and maintain water services in collaboration with a wide range of national and local partners. The award was announced at a special 2014 World Water Day meeting in Accra, Ghana.
Over the last five years, IRC has identified key building blocks that are required to establish sustainable services in water and sanitation and an approach to deliver them as part of its Sustainable Services at Scale research programme operating in Ghana, Uganda and Burkina Faso. In Ghana, this has meant working with government agencies and communities in three districts (Akatsi, East Gonja and Sunyani West). As a result, 50,000 people can now trust that if a service breaks down it will be put right by local government and 1 million people can be assured that someone will be notified to fix the service.
The new project will scale up the innovation from the existing three pilot districts to at least 10 additional districts to serve an additional 1.3 million people. These are the districts where other Conrad N. Hilton Foundation grantees are already working, such as World Vision International, WaterAid, Desert Research Institute, Safe Water Network and UNICEF.
Through the new grant IRC will continue to work to improve district level coordination and water investment planning to reach the entire population in the district, train staff of other organisations in five regions and strengthen government to increase sector stakeholders’ knowledge about and ability to implement key policies, strategies and guidelines.
Read also the press release and the related blog by IRC’s CEO Patrick Moriarty.
