You Spoke, We Listened
Summary
How partner feedback is prompting the Partnership for Better Living to improve public-private WASH sector collaboration
The Partnership for Better Living is a five-year cooperative agreement between USAID and LIXIL, through its social brand, SATO. The partnership will develop reliable sanitation supply chains and contribute to SATO’s goal of reaching 100 million people with sanitation and hygiene solutions.
From the moment we launched in late 2021, The Partnership for Better Living (PBL) set out to listen. For us to successfully achieve the partnership’s goals – among them to strengthen the business and enabling environment for sanitation and hygiene access, and to improve the availability of products and the reliability of the sanitation supply chain – we knew we needed to hear from partners, past, present, and even future.
“Partners” in this context included manufacturers of SATO products, NGOs who procured SATO toilets or handwashing solutions for their programs, and leaders of USAID water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) projects. In sum, we interviewed five NGOs, three manufacturers, and seven USAID WASH projects. We asked them about their experiences purchasing and then installing SATO products. We inquired about barriers to progress within the sanitation supply chain in general, and specific to SATO. We wondered about their successes, their challenges, and any roadblocks they could identify. We requested their recommendations for improving collaboration between the WASH sector’s public and private interests. We asked. They spoke. And we eagerly listened.
Now one year into the partnership, PBL is pleased to share our initial lessons with the broader WASH sector. We are also excited to share our action plans for addressing these learnings, as we believe they will strengthen market-based approaches to improved access to sanitation and hygiene.