Brian McSorley works for Oxfam as a Water and Sanitation Engineering Advisor. He was the focal point for SWIFT in Kenya until April 2016. He looks back at the programme as it comes to an end.
Overall it has been particularly satisfying to have led this process from conception through to successful delivery of the output phase and more recently to hear that the outcome phase has gone well.
I stayed in Kenya for an extra 2 years because of SWIFT. It was a full-time job that I ate, drank and slept thinking about, but not in a bad way, because it was so interesting.
The SWIFT programme is a great example of what Oxfam can achieve. It was exciting because it was WASH at scale. This is what Oxfam is known for.
SWIFT increased the visibility of Oxfam in country, consolidated our reputation for high quality, innovative WASH work. It gave us legitimacy at local, national and international level and provided a platform to launch other initiatives from.
County Government went from a position of being highly critical as they were reluctant to consider any variation to Community Led Total Sanitation, to extremely supportive and strong advocates for our work.