Lessons from WaterAid's multi-country WASH in schools programme

WaterAid conducted a School Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme funded by the H&M Foundation from 2013-16. The programme launch gave an opportunity to test the school WASH approaches and provided space for the WaterAid’s Country Programmes to innovate and integrate successes into programme design. WaterAid capitalised its experience from this programme through learning workshops and end of programme evaluation. This paper summarises the key lessons and recommendations to enhance the quality of the programme design. The key learning from the programme focusses on deepening partnership within the sector, cross-sector engagement, translating policy into practice, sustaining hygiene behaviour change, and increased capacity of government to support sustainability of the intervention. These lessons have influenced our programme design including WaterAid’s new Guidelines for Sustainable and Inclusive School WASH.