Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for WASHfunders, Dan Jones explains that to build human capital, you must understand the importance of and invest in clean water, sanitation and hygiene.

· How can philanthropists contribute to efforts to increase access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene? Why is access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene so important?

· Here's more on this topic and how to use data for more sustainable WASH financing


#InvestInPeople is the straightforward hashtag for the World Bank’s ‘Human Capital Summit’ this week (every conference needs a hashtag these days it seems). It’s a smart re-framing of ‘human development’ aimed at catching the eye of finance ministers who spend most of their time frowning at economic growth forecasts and worrying about competing in the global economy. Rather than putting ‘jobs and growth’ in one bucket and ‘health and education’ in another, World Bank President Jim Kim is making a powerful case that ministers need to wake up and realise that strong economies hinge on countries having sufficient numbers of healthy, skilled and knowledgeable human beings.

It’s a pretty instrumentalist concept, positioning us humans as labour assets whose ability to perform work should be maximised to produce greater economic value. So it sits perhaps uncomfortably with those who would prefer to remind governments that every person has inalienable human rights, and governments have a duty to ensure the provision of quality healthcare, education, water, sanitation etc. to all their people so they can live dignified, safe, happy lives. But – let’s set that philosophical debate aside for another, much longer blog.

As I’ve been reading all the PR around Human Capital, I’ve been struck by just how integral and essential water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are to these aims – and yet how invisible WASH is from the framing. A study by Professor Stephen Lim and colleagues published in The Lancet last week aimed to provide the comprehensive conceptual underpinning for the summit, including an analysis of the human capital status of 195 countries. At the summit, the World Bank will use this data to launch a ‘Human Capital Index’ that, Jim Kim says, will rank countries and should be used “to hold finance ministers’ feet to the fire”.

Read the full article about building human capital by investing in WASH by Dan Jones at WASHfunders.