Improvement of WASH services for vulnerable communities SUMMARY 
The project has started in April 2019 in urban and peri-urban areas of the Dogbo, Athiémé, Lokossa, Dassa and Savalou communities in Benin. The project  is carried out by Plan International Benin and Protos who reports to SNV and the Dutch embassy in Benin. The project addresses the lack of WASH services for vulnerable people. The objectives are to facilitate access to WASH services in 5 municipalities through awareness raising, lobby and public private partnerships. The main beneficiaries are girls, women and young people. The project is being carried out in close cooperation with the local government and all other relevant stakeholders within the selected locations and within the changing national strategic framework for WASH. The Government's desire to promote and increase the attractiveness of secondary cities in order to reorient urban migration risks exploding population growth without having anticipated the size of urban services. Based on several studies: Needs of all stakeholders:
The municipalities have a weak organizational and management skills to implement WASH works, the rendering of accounts and sometimes lack the necessary technical skills
•	The private sector is more than 90% informal. Although they are key players, the delegates in the WASH sector often do not have contracts signed in due form with the municipalities. Suffer from a lack of recognition, a lack of structuring and therefore of certain professionalism. 
•	Users, user organizations and civil society generally have great distrust of communal agents and elected officials, whom they consider to be incapable of adequately providing public water and sanitation services. 
•	At the same time, communities have rarely developed a deep civic conscience, allowing them to feel equally responsible (individually and collectively) and to adopt systematic and everyday acts of citizenship. It is this challenge that the project will try to meet.
•	Women and young people lack financial, entrepreneurial and governmental empowerment. R1: It is necessary to support households to climb the ladder towards improved sanitation. At the same time, access to improved sanitation through sanitary blocks is needed to serve as a lever for change by creating a need. To do this, the municipality must have updated PHACs, real compasses in the field of sanitation for their territory. This result will ensure the availability of hygiene services and sanitation in urban and peri-urban areas and their effective, efficient and sustainable management.
R2: 
At the time of the reforms in the sector AEP, the project will try at best to play the mediation by allowing a citizen watch for the informed follow-up of the reforms and accompanying the communes in the discovery of their new role. At the same time, the construction of kiosks at sanimarché and sanitary blocks will also increase the number of drinking water points of sale in the intervention zone.
R3: 
Approach: If: Tested and approved in the field, the products of action and research-action will be analyzed, quantified, put into statistics, disseminated and will thus give the fundamental material to argument arguments. Both GDP and Protos are involved in this advocacy through participation in various sectoral groups or other bodies
The project's actions will be part of the national strategies that are ending but still in force. Once the new strategies are adopted, the necessary adaptations will be introduced during project implementation to ensure alignment. This project is part of the Dutch development cooperation strategy for Benin, taking into account Benin’s strategy when it comes to WASH. However, some of these national strategies have come to an end and the new ones, currently under development, are not yet adopted. This is linked to the current reforms in the sector. The current government is showing a strong desire to modernize the country thanks to the increased participation of large private operators. The PPP is not new in Benin but it never took this scale and of ease of procurement. The Government wishes to professionalize the sector by entrusting the management of projects to large contractors under the coordination of the National Agency for Drinking Water Supply in Rural Areas (ANAEPMR). MWFs are no longer considered as adequate means of drinking water supply, these are transitional solutions towards the general objective of having an improved source of drinking water at home, and will therefore gradually be replaced by private connections. The project is complementary and will be implemented in synergy with projects of Protos and Plan International Benin projects currently in progress. Women and girls, as well young people, total reach 112,400 people R1: The actions to reach R1 consists  of the following: 
Sanimarketing companies will be strengthened or created. 
A network of craftsmen (masons, carpenters, etc.) (already trained or to be trained) will ensure the construction of the works in the HHs. Access to micro-credit will be facilitated by the creation of savings groups.
Studies (socio-economic surveys, market research or even facilitating access to micro-credits) will help to better understand the players and future clients. 
Social marketing activities will have a catalytic effect in generating demand for services beyond the intervention period.
If sanimarketing is a success and it actually increases the demand for latrines, the question of emptying these latrines will quickly arise. 
R2: The actions to reach R2 consists  of the following:
the municipalities will have to reinvent themselves, allowing and awaiting new strategies planned by the ANAEP-MR. Drinking water points, in the form of urban kiosks, will be created, in connection with sanitary blocks and Sanimarchés. 
CAPE will inevitably have a fundamental role to play during this transitional period to ensure citizen watch and advocacy. For this, they will be accompanied, trained and strengthened.
New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) present a range of tools to help both the monitoring of the sector and behavioral change through information. 
R3: The actions to reach R3 consists  of the following:
Launching phase first, to develop monitoring indicators, initial training, basic studies, recruitment of social intermediation facilitators, etc. Then the setting up of consultation frameworks.
R3 will track all Research-Action activities 
The various studies conducted by the project will also be capitalized and disseminated here. The analysis on fecal sludge management described above will make it possible to propose one or two models of the value chain to be put in place. F increase the consumption of water in order to increase revenues. Sanmarketing ensures access to viable local techniques at low cost. Micro-credit will facilitate access to health facilities. Improving HA conditions will increase the economic activity & financial base of vulnerable. The capacitated Savings Groups is a direct benefit for the consolidation of Income Generating Activities (IGAs), enabling the beneficiaries to have the necessary material and financial means for the applying good practices that guarantee a sustainable and equitable drinking water supply and a good level of hygiene and sanitation. Support is provided to ensure that these material and financial resources are sustained after the end of the project.
I Better collaboration between the actors, allowing for clear definition of roles and responsibilities of each actor
E The end of OD is essential for environmental protection, reduction of pollution and contamination of groundwater and surface water. Fecal sludge management will prevent contamination of the water, surface water and the ecosystem. The RA will be tested at two new Sanimarchés, making them "hubs" of innovation in hygiene and sanitation.
T WASH technologies used in this project are 'SMART': simple, market-responsive, cost-effective and locally repairable. The use of ICTs protects them from obsolescence. Building capacity of local contractors facilitates the maintenance and upkeep of the work and thus the sustainability of the facilities. Promotion of local standards compliant materials and training of local masons ensures the continued acquisition of good quality latrines.
S The focus of this program on civil society and the profesionalisation of the private sector is specifically aimed at ensuring social sustainability.