WASH SDG program (including COVID-19 prevention) SUMMARY: The WASH SDG programme aims to sustainably improve access to, and use of, safe drinking water for 450,000 people, sanitation for two million people and improve the hygiene behaviours of 1.6 million people in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nepal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
The programme is led by the Netherlands WASH SDG Consortium  and is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS)/Inclusive Green Growth (IGG) department. It is built on three core strategic objectives: increase demand for improved WASH facilities and practices; improve the quality of service provision; and improve governance of the sector. In addition, gender and social inclusion and climate vulnerability and resilience are integrated throughout.
Plan International Netherlands is implementing the programme in 5 countries: Indonesia, Nepal, Ethiopia, Zambia and Uganda. The programme started in July 2017 and will run untill the end of 2022. The WASH SDG sub-programme of Plan International aims to sustainably improve access to, and use of, safe drinking water for at least 73,500 people sanitation for at least 540,300 people and improve the hygiene behaviours of 723,000  people before the end of 2022 in Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nepal, Uganda and Zambia.
The WASH SDG Programme specifically targets the poorest of the poor,  women, girls and people with a disability in the cities and rural areas Plan is working. In 2017, 2.1 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services and 4.5 billion people lack safely managed sanitation services. Unsafe hygiene practices are widespread, compounding the effects on people’s health. Access to safe water and sanitation and sound management of freshwater ecosystems are essential to human health; environmental sustainability and economic prosperity. The 2030 agenda for sustainable development established WASH as a priority, embodied in sustainable development goal (SDG) 6 that has the aim to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, leaving no one behind.

Women and girls carry most of the burden of inadequate WASH facilities and services. Just like men, women have knowledge on how and where facilities can be constructed best and how these facilities and services can be managed best, but women have less access on the decision making and profits of it. For this reason the equal participation of women and girls, and building their capacity, within any WASH programme is crucial to attain sustainable results. 
Within the Netherlands WASH SDG consortium programme women, girls and boys and men will be involved equally in the planning and implementation of our WASH interventions. WASH facilities will be gender sensitive and personal hygiene, such as menstrual hygiene management will be part of in our project activities.  (Young) women will be trained to become entrepreneurs in the WASH sector and access to credit for women will be facilitated. The programme will go beyond equal participation and implement a gender transformative approach with the aim to improve power balance between men and women. The WASH SDG consortium programme-level Theory of Change (ToC) was developed and validated in early 2017. As established in the proposal approved by DGIS, the WASH SDG programme is built on the assumption that sustainable and equitable use of WASH by all can be achieved in a locality through:
•	improved behaviour change interventions that lead to increased demand for improved WASH facilities and practices
•	improved WASH service provision that leads to increased availability and affordability of WASH products and services
•	strengthened WASH governance and institutional framework that leads to governments enabling efficient and effective delivery of inclusive and sustainable WASH services. 
In order for WASH to be sustainable and equitable, the programme also assumes that two additional approaches should be endorsed and integrated transversally:
•	gender transformative and socially inclusive WASH 
•	climate resilient WASH services.
Per sub-programme context specific ToC have been developed. The WASH SDG Programme started with an inception phase on the 1st of July 2017 Until the 30th of June 2018. Implementation started on the 1st of July 2018 and will run until the 30th of September 2022 after which the end evaluation will be conducted and the programme closed on the 31st of December 2022. To guarantee sustainability of our interventions, the consortium incorporates the following principles in our approach:

Financial sustainability means that continuity in the delivery of products and services related to WASH is assured, because the activities are locally financed (e.g. taxes, local fees, local credit products). 
Institutional sustainability means that WASH systems, institutions, policies and procedures at the local level are functional and meet the demand of users of WASH services. WASH stakeholders are clear on their own roles, tasks and responsibilities, are capable of fulfilling these roles effectively and are transparent to each other. WASH stakeholders work together in the WASH chain through a multi-stakeholder approach.
The element of environmental sustainability implies placing WASH interventions in the wider context of the natural environment and implementing an approach of integrated and sustainable management of water and waste(-water) flows and resources, including the adaptation to climate change. 
Technical sustainability of WASH services is reached when the technology or hardware needed for continuous services is maintained, repaired and replaced by local people and it is not depleting the (natural) resources on which it depends for its functioning.
Social sustainability refers to ensuring that the appropriate social conditions and prerequisites are realized and sustained so the current and future society is able to create healthy and liveable communities. Social sustainable intervention is demand-driven, inclusive (equality), gender equal, culturally sensitive and needs-based.