Water Services Trust Fund Donor Consultative Workshop

The WSTF was established in May 2004 under the Water Act, 2002 as part of the reforms in the water sector. The Act sets out the framework within which the water sector reforms are being implemented. The organization serves as an innovative funding mechanism to improve the delivery of water and sanitation services throughout Kenya with focus on areas without adequate coverage emphasizing on the poor and disadvantaged groups. WSTF is receiving technical assistance in the formative stages by KWSP.

In pursuit of WSTF mandate, a one-day donor consultative meeting was held 16th May 2006 to provide key anchorage for a road map, along which the WSTF will pursue specific programmes with multilateral and bilateral partners. The meeting was jointly organised and hosted by the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Ministry of Finance and WSTF. The meeting served as a forum for discussion, exploration and cross-fertilization of experiences and ideas among partners and leading experts in the water sector on ways of financing provision of water and sanitation services (WSS) in the under-served areas of Kenya as part of the process to carry forward the water sector reforms agenda. The network partner within KWSP, Guiding Systems (GS) Consult was retained by WSTF to provide facilitation services for the donor consultative meeting.

The specific objectives of this consultancy assignment were to ensure that the meeting: created awareness and raised the profile of the WSTF, highlighted the challenges of providing water and sanitation to underserved areas of Kenya, discussed and enriched the WSTF resource mobilization, appealed for funding support to facilitate the provision of WSS, and discussed the WSTF approach for multilateral and bilateral programmes.