Co-designing activities to assess climate change impacts on rural WASH in Indonesia
ISF, in partnership with Plan Indonesia, held a four day workshop in Ruteng, Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia from 13 to 16 August 2019 to co-design activities to assess the gender and social inclusion dimensions of climate change impacts on WASH.
Climate change is driving water scarcity, extreme weather events, and variability which all have impacts on WASH in Indonesia and around the world. Not everyone experiences the burdens of these impacts and not everyone has the capacity and decision-making power to respond effectively.
ISF, Plan Indonesia Staff, and local researchers exchanged their knowledge, experiences, and ideas on inclusive WASH, climate change, research and practice, and working with rural communities in Manggarai district, during the workshop. To enable this exchange, we dedicated considerable time to understanding each other’s organisations, personal goals, worldviews, and ways of interpreting climate change impacts in a fun and open environment.
We developed a mutual understanding of the nexus between WASH, gender, social inclusion, and climate change through activities such as systems mapping, analysing the differential physical impacts of climate on WASH, and exploring how social processes influence how people experience climate hazards.
We then jointly used our mutual understanding to design practical and useful activities that Plan Indonesia and its government partners can conduct in communities to assess how climate change affects inclusive WASH. We even “tested” the activities ourselves during the workshop before putting together a plan to pilot them in three communities over the coming weeks.
We are excited to put our co-designed activities into practice and see what we learn from them. Check back soon to find out about our learnings as they emerge!
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