DFID’S WASH RESULTS PROGRAMME

In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders worked together to create a blueprint for halving poverty and improving the welfare of the world’s poorest people. This goal was translated into eight specific and measurable goals: the Millennium Development Goals.

In 2014, DFID launched the WASH Results Programme to support the achievement of Goal 7: ‘Ensure environmental sustainability’. One of the targets set out under this goal was to halve the proportion of the global population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

The WASH Results Programme set out to reach 4.5 million people with WASH services by December 2015, and to strengthen national and local systems, building capacity to help ensure interventions are sustainable. The SWIFT Consortium is one of three consortia working to help achieve this objective.

DFID’s WASH Results Programme is being delivered by three consortia and a range of implementing partners across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The SWIFT Consortium is led by Oxfam, with Tearfund and ODI as global members and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) as global associate. SWIFT has provided WASH services to nearly 850,000 people in DRC and Kenya.

The South Asia WASH Results Programme (SAWRP) is led by Plan UK, with WaterAid, Unilever and WSUP, as well as WEDC and Ipsos MORI as Monitoring, Evaluation and Verification Advisor. SAWRP has provided WASH services in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All (SSH4A) is implemented by SNV. SSH4A has provided sanitation and hygiene services to people across Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nepal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

All three consortia are being funded under Payment By Results (PbR) contracts. Instead of a grant, payment is tied to outputs and outcomes that are monitored and verified by a third-party organisation, with non-delivery by the agreed deadlines resulting in non-payment.

DFID’s WASH Results Programme is being delivered in low-income countries with significant water and sanitation needs, through activities which raise water, sanitation and hygiene service standards to the MDG target levels.

DFID has specified that the implementers of the programme should engage with a wide range of stakeholders, including local governments, the private sector and communities in order to increase the likelihood that services will be financially and operationally sustainable. This reflects DFID’s central priority that any benefits achieved should continue beyond the end of the programme.

Results must be shown to be sustainable if the three consortia delivering the WASH Results Programme are to receive payment in full. Following the deadline for outputs delivery, the consortia have two years to continue to engage with stakeholders and build capacity to ensure sustainability.  Checks will be carried out in 2017 and March 2018, and non-sustainability will result in reduced payment.