Giving Compass' Take:

• Despite good intentions, collaboration does not always yield positive results when addressing sanitation issues. Here are some practical ways to collaborate by building and advancing existing efforts. 

• How can donors help improve sanitation and WASH projects through collaboration?

• Learn about why we cannot solve the global water crisis alone. 

If we believe leading thinking on collaboration, we know we need to do more of it. But it’s also common sense that bad collaboration could be worse than no collaboration at all. I think it’s fair to say that despite lots of talk and good intentions to collaborate, the sanitation sector – with a few possible exceptions – is still figuring out how to make collaboration translate into results. Following are some ideas for how we can activate collaboration that is relevant and practical, built on existing efforts.

There are several movements underway in the sanitation space that joined together are the ingredients needed to enable significant progress towards achieving sanitation for all.

Examining these movements and what they respectively offer also gives insights into how collaboration focused on results might concretely happen and why we need to ultimately merge these for scale to happen. By working collectively on market systems, public finance and developing social enterprises we can unlock the potential to achieve progress.  Operationalizing this within sanitation will also be proof of concept for collective impact within international development and support a needed paradigm shift.

Read the full article about breaking down barriers for sanitation by John Sauer at WASHfunders.