My training experience with IRC’s WASH Systems Academy

Published on: 21/07/2025

Pacifique Iraguha, intern at WASAC

Free courses by the Academy offer young proactive engineer new opportunities to improve his work

My name is Pacifique Iraguha and I am a graduate engineer. Recently I completed six IRC WASH Academy courses. These courses have deepened my expertise in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and offered practical insights that are useful for my professional career in the sanitation sector.

My passion and background in civil engineering, with a specialisation in environmental engineering, have given me a strong foundation in the development of sustainable and climate-resilient WASH infrastructure during internships or volunteer work. However, challenges such as financing and climate-related risks have inspired me to gain broader WASH knowledge. Through the blended training offered to the staff of Water and Sanitation Corporation Ltd (WASAC), I took the opportunity, as an intern, to strengthen my expertise in WASH services. The online platform’s flexibility allowed me to learn alongside my professional commitments. The course materials were incredibly engaging, consisting of interactive visuals, podcasts, pdfs and videos that brought concepts to life. I started with the basic courses, i.e. Climate finance and Climate-resilient WASH services. I was captivated by the dynamic contents that clarified the WASH concepts clearly. This provided a strong foundation for the next courses, and I am eager to proceed with more, such as the Building blocks of sustainable WASH systems and Approaches to finance for sustainable WASH systems.

Training highlights:

• Climate finance: The basics: Explores funding mechanisms for resilient WASH projects to mitigate and adapt to climate change. New understandings on carbon credits, green bonds, and climate insurance.
• Climate-resilient WASH services: The basics: Understand adaptive design for climate challenges. Mitigation vs Adaptation
• Climate-resilient WASH services: Insights on integration across all WASH systems building blocks.
• WASH systems strengthening: Aims to ensure long-term access to safe and sustainable WASH services for all.
• Market-based sanitation: The basics: Gain insights into promoting sanitation demand and sustainable services, aligning with my fieldwork.
• Building WASH resilience, conflict, sensitivity and peace: Nexus thinking, new insights on how to minimize negative impacts of shocks and maximize WASH systems performance.

I particularly enjoyed Building WASH resilience, conflict, sensitivity and peace for its focus on conflict-sensitive and collaborative approaches to achieve the SDGs, resonating with my fieldwork. These lessons have enhanced my ability to tackle sanitation challenges, like boosting latrine adoption, wastewater treatment operations and mitigating climate risks. The IRC WASH Systems Academy courses have equipped me with practical, impactful WASH knowledge. As an engineer, I’m now better prepared to design sustainable, inclusive sanitation solutions. I highly recommend these courses to anyone passionate about water, sanitation and hygiene.

Learn more about the WASH Systems Academy