The Osprey Foundation and Aguaconsult convened a two-day meeting in London in early October 2023, building on the All Systems Connect conference held earlier in the year and ongoing system strengthening initiatives in the sector. We planned this meeting to provide the space and opportunity for like-minded organisations to come together and hold open and frank discussions about the challenges, barriers and solutions to accelerating systems strengthening efforts for WASH.
We had representatives from 22 different organisations and 11 countries in the room. Our objectives were to identify practical approaches to do our work better, to increase the effectiveness of the key stakeholders who implement and support WASH systems strengthening and to generate new ideas that merit testing and potentially scaling up.
We organised the discussions and group work around three main themes:
Theme 1. Stimulating and sustaining government leadership in support of systems strengthening.
Theme 2. Generating stronger evidence to support system strengthening.
Theme 3. Improving collective action to accelerate system strengthening efforts.
The report of the meeting is available here
Background materials include the following:
Background note: “Accelerating WASH Systems Strengthening: Background Note for 4-5th October 2023 Meeting in London”
Case studies on systems strengthening and collective action from outside of the WASH sector.
The SHINE Programme, Scotland: transforming paradigms in approaches to healthcare for the elderly.
Learn to Earn, Dayton, Ohio, USA: tackling systemic disparities in educational attainment and racial equity.
TransForm, Canada: combatting long-standing poverty challenges through a comprehensive community-based approach.
