This newsletter highlights recent articles on capacity development published in Capacity.org, a web magazine intended for practitioners and policy makers who work in or on capacity development in the South.

1. Capacity needs for water and sanitation
2. Feature: Achieving MDGs
3. Interview: Water access and sanitation
4. Practice: A beauty contest for toilets
5. Practice: Involving communities
6. Tools and Methods: 'More MDGs per drop'
7. Policy: Improving district level leadership
8. Policy: The importance of public awareness
9. Guest column: Beyond training

This issue of Capacity.Org This issue of Capacity.org looks at the capacities that need to be developed in order for the water and sanitation targets for 2015 to be achievable. The main focus is on capacity needs at the intermediate and local levels, but links between macro-level policy making and local-level implementation are also addressed.

Meeting capacity needs is essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But these needs must be understood in the context of the wider environment in which practitioners work.

Author: Shyama Ramani

Providing sufficient toilet access is key to meeting health and sanitation targets. But it is difficult to ensure that facilities are used properly and maintained.

Agencies and national governments are increasingly involving local communities when developing water and sanitation systems. Despite this, the functionality of systems in East and Southern Africa remain weak.

Authors: Barbara van Koppen

Top-down approach water programmes assume people use water for a single purpose. A ‘multiple-use water services’ approach can unleash massive productive capacity in households and communities.

Author: Carmen da Silva, Patience Turyareeba and Brecht Mommen

Uganda is a frontrunner in East Africa in water and sanitation reforms, but it is struggling to achieve its sanitation and hygiene-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). More district level leadership is needed.

Author: Eric O. Odada

The developed country model for building capacity in water supply, sanitation and hygiene is inadequate for Asia, Africa and Latin America. Developing countries require a different approach.

‘Capacity development’ means different things to different people. However, it is generally considered essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) relating to water and sanitation.

Capacity.org was founded by ECDPM in 1999 and is now jointly published by: 
European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), Maastricht, the Netherlands
SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, The Hague, the Netherlands
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), New York, USA.

The opinions expressed in Capacity.org are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of ECDPM, SNV or UNDP.

Editorial Board: Niloy Banerjee, Volker Hauck and Jan Ubels. The Board is seeking to broaden membership of the Board. Editor-in-chief: Heinz Greijn. Production: Contactivity bv, the Netherlands

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