A fragile context is a geographic area where political and social pressures make people vulnerable to conflict and fracture institutions that should protect them. It is often characterised by violence and instability that impact social, political, and economic life. Additionally, fragile contexts face environmental challenges and climate change such as recurring natural disasters, flooding, or drought. This project aims to document how to deliver high-quality WASH services in fragile contexts and to assess short-term and longer-term effects of high levels of coverage of these WASH services on fragility, vulnerability, and resilience. These projects are being implemented in Bangladesh, Burundi, and Mozambique, each facing a unique combination of fragility ranging from remote cyclone-prone hilly regions in Bangladesh, to extremely low-income drought-and-flood affected districts in Mozambique. This diversity of location allows World Vision to better document and demonstrate the impact of focused programming within the project itself, as well as translate these learnings to improve WASH implementation in other fragile contexts for both World Vision and the broader sector.

Over the past two decades, water service coverage levels have been steadily increasing in Rwanda, though significant gaps remain in many rural communities. In 2018, World Vision committed to reaching 1 million people with access to clean drinking water with the goal of reaching everyone in the areas World Vision works in Rwanda by 2023, through scaling up programming in Rwanda’s most underserved areas. Through the collective effort of a government-led network of actors, achievement of universal water coverage in the 39 sectors (sub-districts) prioritised by World Vision was achieved in 2023.

Summary of our water, sanitation and hygiene WASH UP! programme in partnership with Sesame Workshop.

Capacity statement about our work on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in healthcare facilities.

Annual review of World Vision's work in water, sanitation and hygiene in 2022.

With the introduction of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, World Vision in Indonesia has taken collaborative and bold steps with the government of Indonesia and other development partners to actively work toward achieving the ambitious targets for universal and equitable access to WASH services for all by 2030. World Vision supports government ministries to develop policies, national guidelines, and other WASH-related learning modules and tools, as well as facilitating advocacy events and trainings to improve WASH access.' Given sector-wide challenges with the long-term functionality of rural and small-town water supply services, World Vision has doubled-down on strengthening management systems. World Vision, with a focus on sustainability, empowers, trains, and strengthens water committees in matters of community organization and participation, administration (payment of fees), operation and maintenance of the water systems, and protection of microwatersheds, with the objective that the water committee will manage, operate, and maintain the water systems independently.

Gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) in World Vision's water, sanitation and hygiene programming.

Changing the behaviour of individuals, groups, and organisations is critical to maximising human flourishing. Behaviour change cuts across all technical approaches and critical contexts within water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programming. In addition to changing the behaviour of individuals, transforming social norms and reducing stigma in communities around topics like gender and disability are also key to realising WASH and other development outcomes. Read this capacity statement for information about World Vision's experience, distinctives and approaches for behaviour change in WASH.

Niger WASH in Healthcare Facilities

Summary of microfinance project for WASH improvements in Kenya