The way we work

• Triple-S Ghana is hosted by the Community Water and Sanitation Agency. This means that here is government ownership in leading the process. Triple-S works as a change agent and works behind CWSA. It supports CWSA with the necessary instruments for them to be able to be ‘the police men’ in the sector, ensuring that people adhere to the rules. So Triple-S is not purely advocacy work, standing form the outside, but works from within the CWSA towards change.
• Action research with stakeholders at district level, instead of the traditional approach, where consultants are sent into the field, do the analysis and then present the end reports. In Triple-S plans are co-created and ideas co-generated. So the buy-in is already mainstreamed. To give an example, when the work was done on the functionality mapping, each and every activity, and in every stage of the process, it done with district department staff, from developing the methodology, to doing training, in defining the questionnaires and to doing the data collection by using the phones. Triple-S coached district staff in doing the analysis and developing the reports and the presentation was done by them.

Major steps need to be taken towards harmonizing and coordinating water service delivery in Ghana. After Triple-S has finished, Vida would like to see the following changes. To have:

• An agreed monitoring framework for monitoring services with data on functionality and investment planning based on the systems that need to be fixed as well as the new ones that need to be in place.
• Agreed and published operational documents providing guidance on how to translate policy to practice; defining:
  a) the strategy for delivering water services;
  b) how projects should be implemented;
  c) defining standards and guidelines for delivering water services;
  d) the role of district assemblies in delivering water services in Ghana.
• One operational sector strategy development plan, which defines in broad terms, components for delivering water services with an agreed harmonised and coordinated financing mechanism, so that we can have a frame within which we are providing water services , and we can report against those national and agreed targets that we have.
• One district level development plan, that has a component of the delivery of water services, to which each development partner providing support to water supply will align its activities