Co-director | Growth Hub
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Stef Smits is a senior programme officer and Co-director of IRC's Growth Hub. He has 20 years of professional experience in water supply and sanitation in over 25 countries in Europe, Latin America, Southern Africa, and South Asia. His main thematic expertise includes: institutional models for water supply, sustainability and enabling environment, monitoring, costing and financing of services and integrated water resources management.
Stef has led numerous projects on these topics, and published about them. In addition, he has ample management expertise: from consultancy assignments to multi-annual programmes, and units within an organisation. He has worked for a range of clients including bilateral donors, development banks, research funders and NGOs. Stef holds an MSc degree in Irrigation and Water Engineering from Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Marcala municipality in Honduras is spending a decent amount on WASH, though not yet enough. Read more...
We cannot do it alone. Reflections from the 7th Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) Forum. Read more...
In this document we capture the inputs that contributed in improving water supply to households and an assessment of cost approximation by the Water... Read more...
This document presents the experiences of the Himmotthan Water Supply and Sanitation initiative in developing community-managed rural water systems... Read more...
This study assesses a project in Uttarakhand during which water schemes and rural sanitations were developed to address the water crisis in this... Read more...
On the 3rd of March 2016, a seminar was held at the Australian High Commission in London to present the main findings from the Community Water Plus project on support to community-managed rural water supplies in India. This video contains these presentations.
Read more...For less than US$12 per person per year a town in Honduras can ensure that everyone's water supply keeps working. Read more...
Two years ago, I posted a blog summarizing discussions on whether insuring rural water supply systems is a good idea. But these remained largely theoretical discussions, as there are few examples of such insurances put in place. During field work for the Community Water Plus project in the State of... Read more...
The Community Water Plus project investigates the support that is being provided to community-managed rural water supplies. This is being done for twenty case studies of programmes from across India. Read more...
For community-managed rural water supply to be sustainable, a "plus" is needed: special efforts to empower communities during project implementation, and continued support from government during service delivery. The Community Water Plus project seeks to get a better understanding of the costs of... Read more...
Saraswati Halder, the president of the Durganagar Kanchantala water committee, shows me the committee's bank booklet. It shows only one transaction: 100 Rupees (about 1.50 US$) deposited in 2011, more than 3 years ago. Read more...
The Community Water Plus project assesses twenty cases of support to community managed rural water supplies across India. IRC carried out one of these studies around support to community-managed handpumps in Patharpratima, West Bengal. The case study concludes that an effective mechanism for... Read more...
Everyone in Digambarpur has access to a basic level of water service thanks to support model that allows w ater committees to outsource technical... Read more...
Water For People, IRC and Aguaconsult have developed a set of tools to support the financial planning to reach Everyone Forever with water services. These tools were validated in the municipalities of Tiraque and Araní in Bolivia. Read more...
Financing Post-Construction Support (direct support)", is a video documentary which explores various options and opportunities for post construction support for water and sanitation facilities in Ghana. It draws largely on efforts by two of IRC Ghana's programmes, the Triple-S and WASHCost projects in facilitating sector dialogue and innovations to addresses the situation.
This video was produced in collaboration with the Ghana Watsan Journalists Network.
Read more...It would be easy, and wrong, to say that global conferences rarely deliver results, for sometimes they offer brand new ways of seeing things. Read more...
This includes the structured support activities to service providers as well as to users or user groups. This may be provided in a variety of ways by either local governments directly, by regional utility agencies, specialized agencies or external contractors or a by combination of these modalities. Read more...
