Water, sanitation and hygiene are a core part of our work in Ethiopia, where more than 250,000 children die every year due to dirty water.

At 35%*, Ethiopia’s water coverage is one of the lowest in Africa. Lack of access to safe drinking water makes children especially vulnerable to waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea.

The water crisis also forces millions of people - mainly women and young girls - to spend hours collecting and carrying water, which restricts their opportunities and choices. 

To help address these problems Plan Ethiopia allocates substantial funds to water, sanitation and hygiene projects, including:

• construction of water supply schemes using different technology options such as springs, shallow and deep wells, and roof catchments
• training communities in management and maintenance of water and sanitation schemes
• training communities in sanitation promotion skills
• intensive hygiene education
• supporting construction of latrines

Plan believes that children and adults should be actively involved in the process of identifying water and sanitation problems, designing solutions and managing systems in their own communities.

Action research on ‘scaling up’

The ‘scaling up’ action research programme - initiated by Plan - builds on successful and sustainable community-managed rural water supply and sanitation services to increase their coverage and benefit greater numbers of people.
 
The research programme aims to:

• secure long-term sustainability of community-managed rural water supply and sanitation service
• rapidly serve more people with sustainable rural water supply and sanitation services, bringing coverage up to 100%
• enable exchange of experiences and lessons learned in the action research on ‘scaling up’ with other regional and international stakeholders

Find out more about action research on ‘scaling up’:
 
Download our Action research on scaling up profile (pdf 227kb)
 
View our ‘Scaling up’ brochure (pdf 474kb)
 
Read our research reports:
 
A meta-evaluation of projects and programmes on community-managed rural water supply and sanitation services in Ethiopia (pdf 950kb)
 
A study of water supply and sanitation services in Shebedina Werada of Sidama zone: Case of Midre-Genet (pdf 1.1mb)
 
* Ethiopian Welfare Monitoring Survey 2003