News  >  Blog

WASH Capacity in Humanitarian Emergencies in Liberia

Published 04/03/2020 by Global Communities

Global Communities, as a partner to IRC, implemented the $6.5 million USAID-funded program Partnership for Advancing Community-based Services (PACS) program from 2015-2019 with the goal of improved health-seeking behavior and practices and improved access to safe WASH services. GC was responsible for organizing community engagement meetings to help communities move up the sanitation ladder, encouraging local governments to enforce sanitation laws at the community level, and providing financial and technical support and supervision for the construction of hand-dug wells. In total, PACS facilitated CLTS activities in 1,490 non-open defecation free (ODF) communities in Bong, Lofa, and Nimba counties, resulting in 1,225 new ODF-verified communities, and ODF certification of 953 communities in 21 districts.

Through the USAID-funded $10 million Improved Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (IWASH) program from 2009 to 2015, Global Communities helped residents in six counties in Liberia and targeted neighborhoods in the capital Monrovia to improve their overall health through better water supply systems, sanitation facilities and hygiene practices. IWASH supported the CLTS National Technical Coordinating Unit and county- and district-level structures to adapt CLTS to the Liberian context and triggered 370 communities, 311 (84.1%) of which were verified ODF. Eighty-four teams of Natural Leaders also helped to expand CLTS to 364 Natural Leader Network members.
Read more about our global capacity in preventing, mitigating and responding to outbreaks of infectious disease.