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.
This Triple-S Working Paper presents the Triple-S Principles Framework and the key concepts behind it. It provides a description of how the Principle... Read more...
Community-based service providers need regular, structured support that goes beyond ad hoc technical assistance. Read more...
Estudios de caso mostraron que la práctica de usos múltiples del agua es una realidad en muchas comunidades rurales de Honduras. Se desarrolló una guía para anticipar estos usos en el diseño y la gestión de los servicios de agua, y se la aplicó en comunidades del departamento de La Paz. Read more...
Two weeks ago, the “management and support” working group of the RWSN had its first meeting. This meeting focused specifically on management models and support arrangements for piped water supply in small towns. Read more...
Driven amongst others by the mobile phone applications, more and more statistics are becoming available on the state of water services. These go well beyond the coverage data we were used to in the JMP reports (and which this year gave us some reason to be mildly optimistic). The new stats provide... Read more...
Driven amongst others by the mobile phone applications, more and more statistics are becoming available on the state of water services. These go well beyond the coverage data we were used to in the JMP reports (and which this year gave us some reason to be mildly optimistic). The new stats provide... Read more...
One of the key premises behind community-based management is that users pay for the operation and maintenance costs. On this blog we have reported at various occasions about the non-payment of major repairs. But some of the data presented this recently, show that even payment of minor O&M costs... Read more...
Last week, we had our first Triple-S research seminar, discussing the first findings from the assessments of service provision around point sources in Ghana and Uganda. Read more...
As argued several times, post-construction support is one of the keys to sustainability of rural water supplies. Read more...
Una sistematización de experiencias con el uso múltiple del agua en 14 comunidades en diferentes partes de Honduras revela que es una práctica casi universal, con impactos tanto en la economía familiar como en la sostenibilidad de los servicios. Read more...
Various case studies confirm that multiple-use of water is a common practice in rural communities in Honduras. IRC and FHIS developed a guideline to support consideration for these uses in the design and management of rural water supplies. This guideline was applied in a number of communities in... Read more...
Water For People adopted the "Everyone, Forever" approach. Read the case study to learn lessons on scaling-up rural water and sanitation services. Read more...
Presentation with new research evidence; practices and institutional opportunities and barriers for scaling MUS. Read more...
I have written before about our work on life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) in Honduras. The idea is to look into the real costs of investment programmes and projects in Honduras, so see which intervention model is the most cost-effective. Read more...
Just as Orpheus descended into the underworld to bring his wife Eurydice back to life, the water sector invests heavily in bringing broken-down water supply systems back into function; often to find those same systems slipping back into disuse, as soon as the engineers turn their head to look away... Read more...
José Miguel es circuit rider, especialista responsable de proveer asistencia técnica a un número importante de comités de agua en su zona cerca del departamento de San Vicente, en El Salvador. Read more...
“The goal of universal access to clean water is far from complete”, says IRC's Stef Smits on CNN International. "Reaching the last 10% of the population -- those living in remote rural areas and on the fringes of big cities - will become increasingly difficult and expensive," he explains in “Going... Read more...
On April 20, Ministers of Water and Sanitation from around the world will meet with their Ministers of Finance in Washington D.C. as part of the Sanitation and Water (SWA) for All High Level Meeting. There, they will discuss sector goals and progress, and it goes without saying that the recent... Read more...
