Targeting the vulnerable
WaterAid is committed to addressing exclusion to ensure that the poorest and the most marginalized have access to safe water and sanitation.
A new handpump has made life a lot easier for disabled Azrupa from Nigeria.
Credit: WaterAid / Suzanne Porter
Excluded people are those who have been systematically discriminated against for various reasons beyond their control. They include women, people with disabilities, people living with HIV/AIDS, children and seniors.
Various factors contribute to people being excluded. Social factors, for instance, are deep-rooted in centuries of socio-cultural practices, while other factors tend to be dynamic, such as the economic and political. As well as exclusion from economic activity, exclusion from health and education creates a downward spiral of poverty with increasing effect.
Generally, there are two implications that the excluded face: their needs are not understood, appreciated or addressed, and they are usually voiceless and powerless. This can in turn lead to poor health outcomes, high absenteeism and dropout rates in school, increased economic burden and limited livelihood options, and discrimination and marginalization - all further entrenching conditions of poverty.
As discussed in our report
Equity and inclusion, WaterAid is increasingly taking a 'rights-based' approach to address the immediate, intermediate and fundamental causes of exclusion, and to ensure the poor and excluded receive their rights to basic services, such as water and sanitation.
WaterAid and our partners have a critical role to play in ensuring that the needs and rights of the excluded and marginalized are understood and prioritized by governments and donors, and that these people are not left out of the race to meet quantitative targets, such as those set in the Millennium Development Goals.
Equity and inclusion are therefore defining principles of our work. Equity takes into consideration diverse needs of different sections of communities, aiming at approaches that respond to specific needs. Inclusion takes the form of affirmative action - reversing the downward spiral of poverty.
Download WaterAid's report Equity and inclusion
(PDF 270KB)
Watch the video Who cares? showing how WaterAid is adapting water and sanitation facilities in Bangladesh's capital city Dhaka to cater to the needs of differently abled people.
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Tanzania
Subsidies for seniors
Many of WaterAid's projects charge users small fees to use water sources or latrines - money which is used to pay for running and maintenance costs. But care is taken not to exclude vulnerable groups on the basis of price.
Often, the poorest households receive subsidies, as happens at the Barabara Ya Mwinyi water point in Dar es Salaam,Tanzania. Here, disabled or elderly people are allowed to draw six buckets of water for free each day. It's a reassuring system for 70 year old grandmother Zena Mbwana who said:
"Before the waterpoint was here I had to go to an old, dirty traditional source. Each time I went there it took two to three hours and I went twice a day. Now I am old I don't think I could manage to go to the old source any more, but I can manage to come here because it is so close to my house. I am exempt from paying the fees because I am old and I don't have a source of income."