Getting it together: a multi-disciplinary approach to service delivery

Since the beginning of the international drinking water and sanitation decade, now over twenty years ago, a great deal has been achieved. Yet even today, 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.4 billion, or two out of every five persons lack access to sanitation (JMP, 2000). Whilst there is little hard data to say who these people actually are, there is growing anecdotal evidence that many of the poorest members of society have been left out. Meanwhile, much has been learnt about service delivery. Several major evaluations have reached similar conclusions: projects that did not take into account user demand suffer from poor use, poor sustainability and poor cost recovery (for example, see Cairncross, 1992 and White, 1997). These and other findings have resulted in the emergence of demand focused methodologies, the best known of which is known by its acronym, DRA.