ONEWASH Plus Programme (OWPP) publications

Highlights

Over the last decade, a number of initiatives have focused on improving WASH in small towns in Ethiopia. This has included the ONEWASH Plus Programme (OWPP), a programme coordinated by UNICEF and implemented in eight towns over a six-year period from 2013 to 2019 with GBP 22 million (approx. 33.3 million USD) funding from the UK Department for International Development. The OWPP aims to introduce, test and achieve proof of concept of innovative approaches in integrated WASH service delivery to solve critical gaps related to governance, private sector engagement, climate risks, equity, enabling environment and human resource capacity for WASH in urban areas in order to deliver equitable, sustainable and resilient water, sanitation and hygiene services for all. On the basis of evidence, the OWPP aims to influence policy and to support the development of capacities at national level especially through the One WASH National Programme. The OWPP addresses the enormous challenge of improving WASH service provision in small towns in Ethiopia, working in eight towns across Amhara, Tigray, Oromia and Somali regions and providing 211,623 people (including 101,579 children) with safe water, improved sanitation and hygiene. The implementation of the OWPP is ongoing with cost-contribution from the government and UNICEF post investment support.

To promote learning and sharing of experiences and innovations UNICEF, in collaboration with partners including IRC WASH, World Vision and The Open University, produced a variety of publications, learning notes and online courses. This included four peer-reviewed journal publications that (1) disseminated findings on water and sanitation service levels from 16 small and medium towns in four regions of Ethiopia (2016 ); (2) outlined a framework specifically developed for assessing and monitoring small town water services (2018); (3) provided new perspective on the relationship between water technologies, water services, household socio-economic characteristics (as predictors) and mental health (2018), (4) and assessed the effectiveness of a new contractual modality developed under the OWPP, namely the build, capacity build and transfer (B-CB-T) modality (2019).

A series of eight learning products were also produced from the OWPP which:

1. examined the value addition of the trilateral south-south cooperation strategy between UNICEF, Brazil and Ethiopia within the OWPP (2015)
2. explored the innovation of sanitation master planning within the OWPP including definitions, processes, contents, approaches and lessons learned from the piloting of sanitation master planning to date (2015)
3. discussed the methodology and results from sustainability checks (2015)
4. explained an innovative new contracting arrangement (Build, Capacity Build, Transfer) that combines infrastructure development with capacity building for town water utilities (2016)
5. described specific activities undertaken under the OWPP to address gender and equity issues in WASH (2019)
6. discussed the full chain of services for faecal sludge and solid waste management as applied in the OWPP (2019)
7. presented a technical paper on the value for money analysis of the OWPP (2019)
8. provided an overview of the OWPP for UNICEF’s learning and improvement of its urban WASH program in the form of a results note (2019)

In addition to these publications UNICEF developed with World Vision and The Open University free, online training materials and manuals for urban WASH in 2016 on topics including:

1. Ethiopia’s One WASH National Programme,
2. WASH: Context and Environment,
3. Urban Water Supply,
4. Urban Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, and
5. Urban WASH: Working with People

These are open source and available to the public at open university: https://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/course/index.php?categoryid=131