Community-driven water, sanitation and hygiene programme implementation

Engendering sustainability and programme ownership has remained a major challenge in water supply and sanitation servicedelivery within developing countries. Efforts have been made in the past to ensure that communities are consulted and that they participate in decisionmaking and possibly be involved in the course of programme implementation. This however, was not able to guarantee ownership as communities were often pictured at the receiving end and were only regarded as beneficiaries. Experiences from the Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Reform Programme implementation in Cross River State, Nigeria, have led to an upscale of community involvement in programme implementation. Within this approach, communities are viewed as key players in programme implementation as they are empowered to spearhead key aspects of programme implementation. This created opportunity for human resources that abound within communities to be tapped with resultant improvement in programme output, dynamism and resourcefulness with increased ownership and sustainability.