Blog Post 1: Reflections of an 'Outsider' in the WASH Sector

It would be valid to say that my decision to enrol into the Master of International Development program two years ago was a spontaneous one.  I had only recently graduated from a Bachelor of International Studies (International Relations and Spanish) at the University of Queensland and had the university urging me to complete my honours there.  However, my partner's snap decision to move to Melbourne decided my fate and I found myself wondering what it was I really wanted to do with my life.  Throughout my years of studying international relations I had always found myself thinking about how all these diplomacy decisions affected the people 'on the ground' and I thought that there had to be a better way I could contribute to a sustainable future.

Fast forward to March 2018 and I found myself beginning my international development journey.  I had no idea at that stage where this journey would take me, but I was acutely aware of my need to identify my interests for my final IDRP project.  I saw this final project as a way to practice all the skills that I would have learned throughout the degree and demonstrate my proficiency in a particular area of development.

My key interest in gender and its connection with the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector was quickly established after studying the subjects Gender in Development and International Project Management and I moulded as many assignments as I possibly could to fit within this theme.  Through the completion of these assignments I was able to identify a recurring deficit in many WASH programs both in the development and humanitarian sectors: participatory practices and specific gender considerations - something that I had learned through studying Learning and Participation in Development is essential for the sustainability of any development project.  Being a woman myself, I was particularly aware of the lack of thought given to the issue of menstrual hygiene management and the challenges that millions of women and adolescent girls face in managing their menstruation with dignity.  I am privileged enough to have grown up in a country where I have had no issues with managing my own menstruation and never had to worry about access to appropriate products, despite the existence of cultural taboos.  I think it's important to note that yes, there are still taboos around menstruation in our culture.  I'm sure that if you are a male reading this section of my blog you are slightly uncomfortable reading this and even the reaction of my own mother when I told her what I was basing my project around is telling - "Oh I can't tell my clients you're researching that! I just tell them that you're doing development". So now imagine how difficult it must be for women and adolescent girls who can't discuss this topic with anyone, are given incorrect or no information at all, have restrictions placed on their activities and movements and have no access to appropriate menstrual hygiene products to effectively manage their menstruation with dignity.  

It's interesting to reflect on why something that seemed so glaringly obvious to me, hadn't occurred to those in charge of WASH programming for decades?  One such reason could possibly be due to the dominance of men in decision-making positions within international development and particularly the WASH sector (an industry dominated by engineers - a traditionally male-dominated career path) and the simple fact that because this is not an issue that directly affects them it did not cross their mind when designing interventions.  Another reason could be that up until recently, systems-thinking approaches were not common in development projects and as a result, a thorough understanding of the context in which projects were being implemented just wasn't obtained.  There's a great TED talk on this by Ernesto Sirolli where he makes the obvious but often overlooked argument, "If you want to help someone? Shut up and listen!".  In this talk he reflects on the many failed aid projects he both worked on and witnessed and reflects that these failures happened because well-meaning practitioners failed to listen to the people they were trying to help.  I'm including the link to this talk here, as it's a great resource to refer back to and learn from as we all continue on our respective development journeys: https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen?language=en#t-20932.

So this left me wondering how I was going to secure an IDRP placement within the WASH sector (not having any technical WASH skills) and how I was going to find an organisation that had managed to overcome these deficits that I had identified and that I would thus be comfortable working with.  However, after a deep-dive on the internet I was lucky enough to  discover and be accepted into the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Research Program and am about to embark on a research journey where I will assess the appropriateness of a number of different MHM technologies for the Timor-Leste context.  These technologies have all been designed by first year engineering students as a part of the EWB Challenge program over the years and for a variety of different countries.  

At this stage, I am feeling very overwhelmed with the task I have chosen to undertake but my supervisor from EWB has assured me that they are very excited to see this project taken on from a different perspective.  This has helped me to reconcile my feelings of being an outsider to the WASH sector and I hope by the end of this project I will have made a valuable contribution that others from differing technical backgrounds can then utilise in a true cross-disciplinary project.