The Water Dialogues differed from other international multistakeholder processes in that the emphasis was on national and sub-national level debate and research. National multistakeholder working groups designed and supervised targeted research to assess the most appropriate delivery options for water and sanitation services (WSS). By operating at the level of implementation, the outputs from The Water Dialogues were context specific and fed directly into national sector reform processes.

Facilitating the participation of poor communities and small-scale private service providers in assessing existing WSS and providing inputs into future policy decisions was also a key component of the project. Directly linking communities with policy makers aimed to help ensure services met local needs, strengthened local governance, and increased the sense of local ownership.

Findings from national multistakeholder research have been drawn together and publicised at international level through reports, presentations, conferences and here on the project website so as to contribute to sector policy developments.

In addition, the methods and processes used to create and sustain effective multistakeholder dialogues and the real life experiences of participants have been recorded and published so that others wishing to pursue similar initiatives can benefit from the lessons learned.

All such materials are available on the Publications and Reports page.