Reflecting on Water and Sanitation infrastructure: A toolkit for WASH practitioners on gender and socially inclusive participatory design approaches in urban informal settlements

This toolkit aims to stimulate an increase in quality, inclusiveness, and sustainability in water and sanitation infrastructure projects in urban informal contexts. Such projects need to be more participatory, codesigned with participants with diverse knowledge and lived experience. They also need to be more inclusive, following the principles of ‘leave no one behind’ and ‘do no harm’. These things are hard to do, hence a toolkit to help.

The toolkit is a starting point for practitioners as they plan and implement a participatory approach in designing water and sanitation infrastructure projects. It is positioned at the intersection of participatory design, gender and social inclusion, water and sanitation

infrastructure and urban informal settlements. Rather than offering a set of step-by-step instructions, it presents a series of questions to help practitioners develop a reflective practice about the socio-cultural dimension of water and sanitation infrastructure planning. These questions are connected to practical examples of lessons learned in the Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments (RISE) Program and to existing high-quality guidelines, toolkits and other resources on gender and socially inclusive processes, participatory design, and water-sensitive approaches to city development.

Complementary to this Booklet is a Card Deck - both resources are open-source.

Project website: reflect-on.org