In April 2012 the UK Government committed to scale up results on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and reach more than 60m people with basic WASH services in the five years leading up to 2015.
The WASH RCF was designed as a results oriented challenge fund which will provide grant finance to organisations capable of delivering water, sanitation and hygiene interventions for people who currently do not have access to clean water or safe sanitation. WASH RCF projects must be designed to demonstrate real, positive changes to the lives of poor people.
WASH interventions supported by DFID must be aimed at providing poor people with access to improved drinking water supplies, access and use of basic sanitation and the adoption of behaviours that reduce the health risks caused by poor hygiene, including hand washing at critical times.
In March 2014, the OXFAM consortium which included Tear Fund and Africa AHEAD as well as WUSUP and ODI were one of three finalists to win this bid and have been awarded a 29 million contract to provide cutting edge projects in Liberia, DRC and Kenya.
Africa AHEAD is delighted to be able to provide the ‘software’ for WASH projects in two countries: DRC where we will be starting 120 CHCs in North and South Kivu Districts with Tear Fund, and in Liberia where a small pilot of 20 CHCs with OXFAM is likely to provide a seed project which we hope will go to scale. Within the next month our teams will be forming up and within a year we hope to have completed the first phase of a four year project.