Launch of the Agenda for Change Global Strategy
Announcing the inaugural cohort of mentees for the Women in WASH mentorship program!

Upcoming event

About Us

Agenda for Change is about making a fundamental change in the way we work.

To deliver positive change towards water, sanitation, and hygiene service delivery, we need a systems-wide approach that tackles key building blocks of the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector. Read our Joint Principles to learn more.

Institutional Arrangements & Coordination

Service Delivery Infrastructure

Monitoring

Planning

Finance

Regulation & Accountability

Water Resource Management

Learning & Adaptation

Our Approach

By working together, we can achieve a greater impact.

Our Members ensure that national-level water, sanitation, and hygiene systems exist to enable all districts to reach everyone, and that systems last forever.

Agua Consult

Aguaconsult is committed to improving WASH services across the world and recognises that sustainable and effective service delivery can only happen when systemic weaknesses are addressed. Aguaconsult has experience of working with a wide spectrum of sector actors including governments, donors, utilities and NGOs to strengthen permanent institutions that are responsible for service delivery. Examples range from working with the government of Vietnam on national maintenance strategies for piped water to leading an organisational review of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency in Ghana, to developing instruments to support district-level planning in Rwanda, Uganda and Nepal.

Care logo

CARE works to strengthen the leadership and capacity of governments, at national and sub-national levels, to ensure water and sanitation services for all.  CARE recognizes the vital role of the government, communities and the private sector in providing sustainable services. Their work includes supporting government agencies to develop partnerships with the private sector, co-collecting data and improving quality to inform government, advocating for government-run water and sanitation offices, integrating gender and equity into WASH approaches and working closely with government to institutionalize and operationalize policies.

THE CENTER FOR WATER SECURITY ANDCOOPERATION

The Center for Water Security and Cooperation (CWSC) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that is building the foundation for systems strengthening in water and sanitation law and policy at both national and local levels. CWSC critically examines water laws including legislation, regulations, policies, plans, strategies and court decisions across essential nexuses (agriculture, drinking water, health and hygiene, national security, peace and conflict, and others) to comprehensively understand how laws govern and impact water security. CWSC also facilitates evidence-based law and policy drafting, revision, implementation, enforcement, monitoring, and review.

Concern Wordwide

In 2016, Concern Worldwide’s WASH Programme adopted a Service Delivery Approach which takes a demand-led approach and is concerned with system strengthening. One such experience in WASH systems strengthening took place in the DRC. The DRC WASH Consortium, which ran from 2013-2019, was a £30 million GBP project, with Concern Worldwide as the lead agency. The WASH Consortium developed an innovative economic approach based on the life-cycle cost analysis tool. Business plans were developed for sustaining the short, medium and long-term functioning of the new water services established and to set up revenue streams to cover these costs. Concern is also working on various methods of WASH systems strengthening in a number of other fragile contexts.

CRS Catholic Relief Services

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) deploys a systems lens to contribute to achievement of universal water security, including analyzing watershed and landscape health; engaging, planning, and responding through national and sub-national policies, actors, and partners; and, by strengthening existing public and private systems. CRS advocates for improved regulations and policies, and supports networks (e.g., civil society, the private sector, and government) to enhance the results they achieve. CRS’ water security programs engage various government ministries with responsibilities in water and other cross-cutting areas (health, gender, education, environment, agriculture, and others), as well as national civil institutions working in water governance.

Helvetas logo

Helvetas is progressing systemic change in small-scale agriculture to achieve large scale impacts and improve the livelihoods of farmers and vulnerable populations, notably through integration of water into market systems using inclusive approaches. Helvetas facilitates collective action across stakeholders in the public and private sectors; explores linkages between interventions at the farm level up to the national level; and, strengthens the capacity of stakeholders to support local ownership and accelerate replication of best practices within and across countries.

IRC logo

IRC is an international think-and-do-tank building strong WASH systems. Their goal is to challenge and shape the established practices of the WASH sector to ensure that services are available for everyone, for good. They work with governments, service providers, and international organisations to deliver systems and services that are truly built to last, and they do this at three levels: in districts, nationally and globally. They will judge themselves based on the progress they have made in achieving SDG Global Goal 6 – Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all – by 2030.

Osprey logo

The Osprey Foundation supports water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) initiatives that deliver effective, sustainable, and scalable services in underserved communities. Osprey focuses on strengthening the local systems for delivering sustained WASH services through integrated, multi-pronged programs. Osprey also takes risks on innovative models with the potential to create game-changing improvements in WASH service delivery. Complementing these efforts, Osprey advocates for change within the WASH sector through collaboration with other funders and by challenging the sector to adopt approaches with the potential for greater impact.

Splash logo

Splash is taking a systems strengthening approach through Project WISE (WASH-in-Schools for Everyone), a five-year initiative to improve WASH infrastructure, change WASH behaviors, and improve menstrual health services across 100% of government schools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Kolkata, India. Project WISE targets all actors in the school WASH ecosystem (from government stakeholders and funders, to school principals, teachers, and janitors, to students themselves). The initiative engages key stakeholders through formal collaboration frameworks and includes other critical elements such as life cycle costing, building robust local supply chains, and working with schools and government to ensure sufficient funding is available for long-term operations and maintenance.

WaterAid logo

At WaterAid, systems strengthening means understanding that WASH services contain many component parts that function within different socio-economic, political and environmental contexts. An example of this work is the SusWASH Programme – a five-year multi-country initiative focused on strengthening government leadership and accountability for WASH in Kampala, Uganda. They are also strengthening national and sub-national government-owned WASH monitoring information systems to help inform WASH investment, planning and decision-making, as well as supporting national governments and local level entities to cost and budget for the full costs of sustained, universal access.

WaterForGood logo

Water for Good focuses on strengthening the building blocks for sustainable water services and increasing access to reliable, basic water services by focusing investment and integration of services with regional government systems in one district of the Central African Republic: the Mambéré-Kadéi Prefecture. Water for Good is building a collective roadmap that focuses on the development of contextually appropriate maintenance services that water users demand, consistent with UN Sustainable Development Goal 6.1. The outcomes of their strategy in the prefecture will provide a model for the expansion of services to other prefectures by 2030.

WaterForPeople

At Water For People, Everyone Forever means water and sanitation that lasts – for every family, clinic, and school. It sounds simple, but it’s a big shift in the status quo. They work to change the whole system that delivers basic water and sanitation services to everyone in a district. Everyone Forever means they focus on things like protecting water supplies, training mechanics, and establishing supply chains for parts. It means they think about long-term projects like advocating for national water policies and creating local water and sanitation utilities. They stay in partnership until they are confident that water will flow long after they leave a district.

WaterSHED logo

WaterSHED empowers local businesses, government, and other leaders to expand and maintain an inclusive WASH market in Cambodia. WaterSHED’s market-based sanitation program accelerated rural sanitation to more than 60% coverage in six years through building of stronger, local systems alongside leaders. WaterSHED believes that systems strengthening does not require an NGO to grow (in budget, size, or footprint); therefore, WaterSHED’s 2018-2020 Strategy is focused on exploring opportunities to expand impact that will stem from partnership, replication, and integration with organizations positioned to leverage their experience, rather than expansion of the organization.

Welt Hunger Hilfe logo

In 2017, Welthungerhilfe in partnership with Aguaconsult, the German Toilet Organization and Viva Con Agua, launched the Sustainable Services Initiative, an internal initiative to improve the sustainability of Welthungerhilfe’s WASH programmes, primarily through encouraging the uptake of a systems strengthening approach and to advocate in the sector and partner countries for a more sustainable approach to WASH programming. Through systems-strengthening programmes in Uganda, Nepal, Ethiopia, Malawi and Kenya, currently more than 1 million people benefit from the improved WASH governance on district level.

Collective action that drives systemic change can help solve the global water and sanitation challenge.

Where We Work

Agenda for Change members are working globally to apply systems approaches.
Click on the highlighted countries below for more information.

  • Country Collaboration

Latest Updates

Announcing the inaugural cohort of mentees for the Women in WASH mentorship program! 1875 1408 Agenda for Change

Announcing the inaugural cohort of mentees for the Women in WASH mentorship program!

Systems Library

Resources
Launch of the Agenda for Change Global Strategy 1

PDF Download

Agenda for Change Global Strategy 2023 – 2026
Strengthening Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Systems: Concepts, Examples, and Experiences

PDF Download

Strengthening Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Systems: Concepts, Examples, and Experiences
Resources Joint Principles

PDF Download

Agenda for Change Joint Principles
Resources District Level Roadmap

PDF Download

A district-level roadmap for universal access to sustainable WASH services
New paper - A district level roadmap for universal access to sustainable sanitation services

PDF Download

A district-level roadmap for universal access to sustainable Sanitation Services
Videos

Monitoring and Evaluation of WaterAid’s work on WASH System Strengthening

Systems Learning Exchange: Recasting our WASH Systems Boundaries

WASH systems, sustainability, and resilience: Why do they matter?

Longterm planning for WASH services: A case of Karabole district, Uganda - Part 3

IRC Uganda

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