Ned Breslin
CEO, Water For People

"There is clearly a desire to change direction within the water sector, as evidence of project failure has become impossible to ignore given the explosion of geo-located data (a great change in the water sector these past 10 years). There is the start of evidence of change from projects to services and a growing emphasis on longer-term support but the behaviour change needed from governments, donors and NGOs is still some time away. The rhetoric has been shifting in the right direction for the past 10 years – on everything from monitoring to service delivery to scale – and actions that match this rhetoric should follow soon.

Water For People has modelled that change at scale across 30 districts in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We have changed our organization, built monitoring into our DNA and developed an initiative called Everyone Forever (EF) that is focused on, and judged upon, long-term results. We have spoken honestly about progress and challenges, and have seen increases in coverage, sustainability, government finance to EF-supported districts and most importantly a desire of other districts to replicate this work. We are offering an alternative approach that is starting to be adopted by new districts and other NGOs.

In the future, we hope that we actually have the courage to be bold, to support work along the lines and principles of Everyone Forever (not clear what the alternative is) and that we actually solve the WASH crisis. That will only happen if real change happens within all agencies involved in WASH, and I am hopeful it will."