Propose a new group: Water Sanitation Hygiene (or WASH)

[Peter J. Bury]

Dear all 

I finally joined the frontlinesms Ning. Not even hands-on experience with the application yet, but wanting to since close to 6 months!

I see and will probable join a number of interesting groups, a.o. on health and agriculture. I think the WASH (Water, Sanitation, Hygiene) sector can learn a lot from the increasing number of frontlinesms experiences in health and agriculture. Maybe even more from the elections one, as our main aim is to involve citizen's - water and sanitation services users - in monitoring and feedback on these very services.

I see a few people also touching on WASH related fields and wonder if there would be interest in setting up a WASH specific group next to the current existing 8 groups covering other fields.

I'd appreciate some feedback before arranging the creation of such a new group.

Greetings, Peter

(IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre)

[Laura Walker Hudson]

Hey Peter,

This is a great idea. We'd welcome more discussion of technical (sectoral) things on the community but I think people get frightened off by all the techie (IT) discussions.

So I'd say, let's see how many people respond to your message! I'll feature it so that it stays on the top of the forum, and people: if you'd like us to arrange this group, or any other, speak up!

Laura

[Jeff Seaman]

Hi Peter,

I think this is a great idea. I am doing monitoring in a WASH related field (household water projects in Cambodia), and a group like this would be awesome.

-Jeff

[David Taylor]

Hi Peter,

Very interesting. There is a lot of buzz around East Africa at the moment about the use of SMS to monitor WASH services. I think a new group would be a great place to throw some ideas around.

David

[Laura Walker Hudson]

Hi guys

Great to see you all discussing! One of the things we wrestle with is that we don't want to have lots of small very specific groups with only a few members, so we're still thinking it might be better at this stage to have a WASH thread on the health forum - what do you think?

Laura

[David Holstius]

Yes, this would be of interest.

I know there are several people in my department (Environmental Health) interested in FLSMS. Maybe it would be interesting to propose a Public Health or Environmental Health group? Or not! Certainly would not want to reinforce any artificial distinctions. My background is in IT/engineering, so that's just my $0.00002. These monikers are all new to me.

[David Holstius]

As another example, we just encouraged a group doing the annual malaria survey in Uganda to take a look at FLSMS for distributed data collection.

[Laura Walker Hudson]

David,

That's great. Let us know if we can help at all, providing case studies and examples or talking through functionality and deployment ideas.

Laura

[Amy O'Donnell]

Dear All, 

 

It was great to find this discussion thread! At the moment I'm really interested in finding out about any projects using FrontlineSMS in the water and sanitation sector. I've already found two examples - one on irrigation pumps another on IOM's work in the aftermath of the Pakistan floods last year. I'm really excited to hear about any more similar case studies from the community.

 

Can anyone in this thread who's already shared information about their projects offer an update - are you still using FrontlineSMS?

 

Otherwise I'd be interested to hear from anyone working in this sector and using (or thinking of using) text messaging. If possible please can you give some examples of SMS sent and received? How does this help you reach more people or save you time/money? Is the purpose of messages focused on behavioural change / offering information / organising logistics etc? What other advantages are there?

 

If you are prepared to offer any more detailed information and potentially write a blog post please get in touch. 

 

Many Thanks,

 

Amy \o/

 

 

[Gwenael Prié]

Hi Amy, hi everybody,I was looking for info on Frontline use in the WASH sector and bumped into this old but interesting thread.

Have you been able to identify other projects than the ones mentioned here?

Thanks!

Gwenael