Gender Transformative WASH: UNICEF train Stakeholders for ASWA project

By Uangbaoje Alex, Kaduna

In line with the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF), infrastructure gender responsive standards and programmes, the agency in collaboration with the Kaduna State government has conducted Acceleration to Sanitation and Water for All (ASWA) Phase III gender transformative WASH training for major stakeholders in the State.

The training participants were drawn from relevant Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs), Civil Society Organization implementing WASH and officials of the two pioneering LGAs of Lere and Kagarko, implementing the ASWA III project.

The ASWA project is funded by government of the Netherlands and implemented in Nigeria by UNICEF.

The two days training seeks to Improve participants understanding of gender concepts, including gender equality, equity and transformative approaches in WASH, equip them with skills to conduct gender analysis, support to reduce gender gaps and become gender champions.

The training will build capacity to design and implement gender transformative WASH programming, including monitoring and evaluation, facilitate sharing of experiences and lessons learned between participants.

And also increase their commitment to advance gender equality, empowerment of women and girls, and social inclusion considerations.

Speaking at the opening of the training, Director General of Kaduna State Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASSA), Engr. Mubarak Shehu Ladan, said the selection of the State as one of the two states implementing the project will not be taken for granted.

“As we are aware, Kaduna is one of the two states that have been selected for this project, this is by no means something we should take for granted. UNICEF did not make a wrong decision by this, so let us prove ourselves right.

“You worked for it, you earned it, so you should ensure that you take this program for such competition that whenever we have such programs, Kaduna and these local government areas will do well to attract others to come and join.

“I believe all of us here are aware of ASWA program objectives and what it entails? These are all part of the program operational plan for a successful implementation. We all know that Kaduna always comes out on top whenever we have such programs, so this should not be an exception.” He added.

Highlighting the importance and benefits of the project, David Damian, WASH Officer UNICEF Kaduna Field Office, said ASWA III is one of the projects that UNICEF is implementing with the Kaduna State Government that has emerging packages like climate resilience, sustainability, Gender Transformative WASH etc.

“What the project wants to emphasize on, is the construction of WASH facilities that are climate resilient in communities, schools, primary health centers and to build capacity of relevant stakeholders to implement other components of the project to scale.

“Apart from service delivery and capacity building; the project plans to strengthen women with knowledge and skills to take up WASH paid jobs at the community level and to implement some activities that will make them to become empowered citizens in these two local government.

“The project is designed in a way that the state government will play its role by remitting counterpart support to ensure ownership and sustainability of the project and UNICEF will match it up. The benefitting LGAs have also shown interest to be part of the success story by committing to remittance of monthly operational fund and also implement component of the LGA project work plan. So the developed ASWA III plan with specific identified activities are presently with the benefitting LGAs for full implementation.

“So resources expected from the LGAs and the state are required as when due to support achieve planned results at all levels and even to encourage communities to take ownership of the project which is meant to end in 2027. The state government, the local government, and even the communities should be able to keep this intervention going.” David explained.

According to him, the ASWA III Project gender transformative WASH approach, basically commenced with the conduct of an assessment and analysis on females WASH status’ in Lere and Kagarko LGAs.

The GALA (Gender Landscape Analysis) report showed that WASH implementation is presently gender sensitive, issues between males and females have been identified and recommendations made on what needs to be done for improvements to gender transformative status, He added.