The Water and Sanitation Program - Environmental Health at USAID

DRAFTo Partnerships should be formalized in the simplest possible way while maintainingaccountability and minimizing riskso Sustaining Partnership requires a commitment to mutual understanding andcontinual adjustmentThe WSP partnership strategy document also identified four types of partnerships forWSP: a) policy influencing partnerships; b) implementation/ investment partnerships; c)networking and capacity building partnerships; and d) learning partnerships.Policy influencing partnerships are those long-term partnerships established over a longtime with counterpart government agencies. These partnerships are characterized by theirlong-term nature, mutual understanding, trust, and patience. WSP plays a key role inthese partnerships by linking national level policy makers with international thinking andalso with potential funding partners. WSP will continue to enter into strategic policyinfluencing partnerships with counterpart agencies working on sanitation. Good examplesinclude the sanitation partnerships with the Government of Peru for the Sanitation as aBusiness Program, with the Government of Indonesia for the ISSDP program, with thegovernments of Pakistan and Bangladesh for their national total sanitation programs, andwith the Government of Ethiopia at the central and local level for their sanitationprogram.Implementation/ investment partnerships should not be confused with contracting WSPstaff to implement others’ programs. An effective implementation partnership is onewhere WSP can bring some of its specific skills to assist in increasing the effectiveness ofan investment program at the upstream analytical stage, the design stage, or themonitoring and evaluation stage. Often intimately bound up with a policy developmentprocess, this influence can be brought to bear on pilot projects or on investments at scale.Good examples of implementation/investment partnerships in the area of sanitationinclude the involvement of WSP in the design of sanitation programs funded by theWorld Bank in all four regions, the role of WSP in the investment programs of Pakistansub-national sanitation programs, the sanitation pilots in Indonesia, the sanitationinvestment programs by several donors in Ethiopia, and the global Scaling Up projectsupported by the Gates Foundation being implemented by four countries around theworld.Networking and capacity building partnerships have been a major focus for WSP for anumber of years (one of the early examples being the ITNs). In these types ofrelationships WSP usually brings specialized knowledge of the sanitation sector andexperience of how to organize capacity building processes to support a national orregional network, which has a particular sector focus. Often these types of partnershipsinvolve multiple partners. They may be quite informal in nature and rely on thewillingness of organizations to work together to promote a new idea or support a process.They tend to work well when the idea is well formulated, when there is a secure flow offunds for a definite time period, or where there is a strong local institution, which isanchoring the activity. Good examples in the area of sanitation include the WSP supportto the regional networks of sector professionals in Central America, the regional water28