Plan International implements multiple uses

From 21-26 May 2006, PLAN International (eastern and southern Africa region) held a learning workshop on ‘Food and Nutrition Security and Multiples Uses of Water’ in Malawi. The meeting was attended by around 30 PLAN advisors (in WATSAN, livelihoods, learning, and health) from 10 African countries as well as regional and international advisors. This was a follow up to an earlier training workshop (in October 2004) on multiple use approaches, that was facilitated by IRC and IWMI. Since then, PLAN have been trying to implement what they call MUW (multiple uses of water) in their programme. This effort is based upon the idea that their fragmented water-related interventions in health, food security/nutrition, livelihoods and WATSAN could have more impact if they were better integrated. The workshop was an attempt to encourage learning within the organisation on experiences to date with MUW approaches. Examples of projects that were presented included:

• multiple purpose dams in Ghana designed for irrigation, fisheries and livestock use
• dams in Kenya for livestock, gardening and domestic use
• promotion of drip kits in Zimbabwe for garden irrigation, including work to localize their manufacture
• boreholes with windmills in Zambia to supply groups of 20-30 families with water for irrigation, livestock and domestic use

PLANs work is probably the largest scale example we are aware of where an NGO is trying to mainstream the principles underlying the PRODWAT group in practice. They are interested to work with partners to better document and learn from these experiences.

For more information on PLANs work in the region on multiple uses of water please contact Amsalu Negussie