Lake Victoria Region Water and Sanitation Initiative

Supporting Secondary Urban Centers in the Lake Victoria Region in order to contribute to the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Starting in February 2009, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education (Delft, The Netherlands) will participate in the Lake Victoria Region Water and Sanitation Initiative (LVWATSAN).

SNV, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Gender and Water Alliance and UNESCO-IHE have entered into a partnership arrangement with UN-Habitat for the implementation of the capacity building component of this programme that is funded by multiple bilateral and multilateral donors.

The capacity building programme has been initiated to support pro-poor water and sanitation investments in the secondary urban centers in the Lake Victoria Region.

[...]

In the first phase ten towns will be involved, among which are Homa Bay and Kisii in Kenya, Bukoba and Muleba in Tanzania and Masaka and Kyotera in Uganda. Mutukula, on the Uganda-Tanzania border, will be the seventh town in the first phase. In all, a total of 24 towns will be involved.

[...] A stakeholder workshop on capacity-building, held in October 2006, elaborated on six thematic areas in which capacity should be built:

• Pro-Poor Governance
• Local Economic Development
• Utility Management
• Urban Catchment Management
• Advocacy and Awareness Raising
• Gender Mainstreaming and inclusion of Vulnerable Groups

[...] UNESCO-IHE will take up the subjects of utility management and urban catchment management, and has formed a five-member team to implement the work that will consist of situational analysis, training needs assessment, preparation of generic training materials, training of trainers, coaching and capacity enhancement for knowledge development and management.

The team consists of Marco Schouten, Mariska Ronteltap, Hans van Bruggen, Saroj Sharma and Maarten Blokland (project manager) and the time input by UNESCO-IHE will be about 370 days over about one and a half year, starting in February 2009.

The value of the contract is about US$ 500,000.

Source: UNESCO-IHE, 10 Dec 2008