This document discusses community management of rural water supply systems and the need for a paradigm shift from solely relying on community management to a model of "community management plus" external support. It outlines the common system of establishing infrastructure and handing it over to local water user committees for management. However, field realities often show lip service is paid to community participation principles and technology failures exceed local repair capacity. A new approach is needed where external support enhances committee performance, recognizes threats, and plans for more sustainable professionalized service delivery models in the future.

1. Richard Carter, Head of Technical Support, WaterAidChair, Rural Water Supply Network Optimising community management of rural water services

2. Rural water supply and community management The dominant paradigm since the early 1980s establish physical infrastructure set up community management arrangements (water user committee and revenue collection) hand over and walk away Water user committee organise, train External intervention manages Water supply assets design, construct

3. Rural water supply systems (1) Point sources – the vast majority using groundwater Typified by borehole – handpump supplies Community-managed by Water User Committee

4. Rural water supply systems (2) Gravity flow piped systems – community-managed by tap and system committees

5. Rural water supply systems (3) Motorised borehole systems. Community-managed or more commonly private operator-managed. Need for sound management and financial viability. Need for regulation. Increasing in number?

6. Rural sanitation systems – household latrines Household latrines – hh spending decisions to be taken when full

7. Rural sanitation systems – institutional latrines Generations of defunct and abandoned school latrines

8. Common principles of household and community management for sustainability

9. Field realities lip-serviceto principles of community participation and management benevolencerather than empowerment for community management lack of monitoring of post-construction performance

10. Field realities community management worksbut it has its limits technologycan fail in ways which communities cannot fix committees can failbecause of breakdown of trust or of voluntarism the operating environmentcan militate against sustainable service provision external shockscan undermine the best of systems

11. The need for a paradigm shift from belief in community management to community management plus the ‘plus’ involves external support, due attention to financial viability and to the environment not an abandonment of past practice, but building on experience to step up a gear

12. Doing differently and better Community-management Community-management plus Sustainable service

13. Community management plus Water user committee External support (to both “hard” and “soft” infrastructure External intervention limited ability to maintain Water supply technology

14. Community management plus Enhanced performance of CM external support - both strategic and responsive recognition of internal and external threats to community management thinking beyond CM and CM+ to future models of ‘professionalised’ service delivery

15. WaterAid’s sustainability framework TRUE DEMAND EXTERNAL SUPPORT TO ACHIEVE COMPETENT CM DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION

16. http://www.wateraid.org/documents/plugin_documents/sustainability_framework_final.pdf http://www.wateraid.org/documents/plugin_documents/sustainability_framework_french_final.pdf http://www.wateraid.org/documents/plugin_documents/sustainability_framework_portuguese_final.pdf

18. Why better models are needed: handpump functionality, 2009 [data and estimates RWSN] Population-weighted average 63% - reduces coverage by one third

19. Why better models are needed: decline over time in Tanzania [WaterAid study, 2006, Haysom]