By Edmund Smith-Asante, ACCRA
Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) participating in the 25th edition of the Mole Conference series have been urged to work more together than in isolation in the WASH sector.
The call was made by Ms Veronica Ayi-Bonte of IRC Ghana, during a presentation on the evaluation of leaning work by IRC at the Mole Conference on Thursday, November 6, 2014.
Working together, she said, would promote a stronger sector through support to each other and also prevent the duplication of efforts.
According to the study report, there was the clear need for ownership, while financing was needed to sustain learning platforms. “Unless we own the process, we will have good concepts but we cannot sustain them,” she said.
The study report recommended the adoption of a learning framework to stop the incidence of truncated learning cycles and strengthening of the Resources Centre Network (RCN) secretariat to better and fully facilitate sector learning processes.
Learning platforms
She presented a range of learning platforms in the WASH sector identified by the study, such as the Mole Conference series, the Ghana Water Forum, National Environmental Sanitation Conference (NESCON) and the National Level Learning Alliance Platform (NLLAP). These according to the study findings have contributed to the current vibrant sector dialogue, sharing and reviews.
The findings, according to Ms Ayi-Bonte however stated that there was the need to go beyond this component of the learning cycle to deliberately and systematically track and analyse trends and ask relevant research questions to inform practice and policy.