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Due to expansion of its activities, Aidenvironment has an opening for a Senior Agro-economist. The successful candidate will be responsible for providing clients with strategic advice on how to enhance the sustainability of supply chains and develop supporting policies and instruments. He or she will have a longstanding international consultancy track record in agricultural economics.

For full details of the vacancy and information on how to apply, please download the pdf.
Please note that an excellent command of both Dutch and English is required for this position.

Click here and visit the Aidenvironment website!

The need for Rainwater Harvesting has been growing rapidly over the last decennia. Basis for this increasing popularity is the growing need for water not only to be used for agriculture purposes, but also for producing high quality drinking water in combination with the awareness that rainwater is a valuable water source.
Aqua-Aero WaterSystems have developed a simple, economic and cheap solution to capture rainwater, sell it and thus deliver a financial sustainable option.
In July 2012 they realized a rainwater harvesting pilot project in Senegal capturing 65,000 liters.

Cost reduction

In order to reduce costs, they used a 0.5 mm PE foil sheet tank that was situated into a hole in the ground. These tanks, or ‘RainCAPs’, can be best described as a giant plastic bag. No concrete, RVS or other expensive materials were used. They dig a hole, add a simple 4 layer brick stone wall and lower the plastic bag into it.

The practice

In June 2012 the RainCAP system was installed in Senegal. One month later the rain season started, filling the foil tanks rapidly. Once the tanks were full, and tests had proved the water pathogens free, people were invited to taste and buy the water. Over the last month an increasing number of people started buying water. After 4 months of operation they sold 20,000 liters of water. The collected rainwater appears to be of high quality, the taste is excellent and the foil construction works fine.

Read more... (last part of the article on the website of International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance (IRHA)) 

IFAD, the International Fund for Agricultural Development provides RAIN Foundation with a grant to execute a global program on ‘Rainwater Harvesting for Food Security; Setting an enabling institutional and policy environment for rainwater harvesting’. We are very proud and happy, because it will give RAIN Foundation the opportunity to make a difference.

Though there are various RWH focused organizations and networks, their initiatives and practices are often scattered and disunited. Access to each other’s experiences, resources and lessons, while simultaneously joining forces to influence policies is still not widely practiced. Sound knowledge management systems on this specific topic are absent, making it difficult for an ‘outsider’ to judge which information to use and how to decide when RWH is an adequate solution. This grant will make it possible to develop and manage a viable knowledge management system, as a strengthening tool to the very valuable existing initiatives on RWH.

Objectives

In the next 2.5 years, RAIN's main objectives using this grant will be to:

1. mobilise and strengthen a range of existing rainwater harvesting (RWH) networks to undertake collective action
2. develop global, regional and national inter-institutional learning systems on RWH 
3. reinforce innovative RWH approaches and mainstream these into quality enhancing operations

Potential of Rainwater Harvesting

RWH is often solely perceived for its relation with drinking water, while the potential for other uses, such as kitchen gardening, food production, groundwater recharge, water retention at watershed level, for environmental use etcetera is huge. RAIN aims to contribute to above-mentioned elements, thereby, giving a boost to the uptake and up scaling of RWH.

Harvest RAIN, store the future

RAIN is an international network which aims to increase the access to water for vulnerable sections of society in developing countries - women and children in particular - by collecting and storing rainwater.

Started in December 2003, RAIN focuses on field implementation of small-scale rainwater harvesting projects, capacity building of local organisations and knowledge exchange on rainwater harvesting on regional and a global scale.

For more information, please contact Guus Paardekooper, Managing Director of RAIN at paardekooper(at)rainfoundation.org.

From 1 July our new address will be:

Barentszplein 7

1013 NJ Amsterdam

The Netherlands

All telephone numbers as well as e-mail addresses remain unchanged.

Go to our page Projects and find out more!

The Dutch WASH works towards a society in which everybody has access to sustainable water and sanitation. In this alliance, Simavi, AMREF, ICCO, WASTE, RAIN and Akvo intensify their already ongoing cooperation and coordination in order to further increase effectiveness and efficiency and learn from each other in WASH projects. We work in Bangladesh, Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nepal and Uganda with a range of programme partners. Click here an visit the website!

From 31 May - 1 June, the yearly MUS Group meeting was held in Rome, hosted by IFAD. During the preceding MUS Group meeting in November 2010, the MUS Group discussed planning and implementation guidelines, as developed by several of its members. Based on this, a commitment was made to consolidate more generic planning and implementation guidelines for MUS. This year's MUS Group meeting therefore focused on discussing these generic guidelines further. To feed the generic guidelines with practical experiences, NGOs, research organisations and IFAD (host), shared experiences in applying the MUS approach. Objectives of the meeting were:

• Sharing of experiences in MUS implementation
• Furthering work on generic planning and implementation guidelines for MUS
• Sharing IFAD’s experiences in MUS and exploring opportunities for collaboration on MUS.

A summary for generic MUS guidelines was presented on “how to” do MUS. Four MUS entry points were presented:

• Domestic-plus: near/at homestead; more water to ‘climb the water ladder’, 3-5 lpcd safe water.
• Irrigation-plus: add-ons for access, year-round storage/supplies, groundwater recharge, fish-crop, ecosystem services
• MUS technologies by design -individual/communal (e.g., rope-and-washer pumps, hybrid gravity systems, tanks/reservoirs, point-of-use treatment, soil and water conservation)
• Community-driven MUS by design: participatory planning for multiple uses and sources; increasingly integrated in local government for scaling

For full information, see the report and minutes.

On the 23rd of June RAIN was awarded a grant of 44.000 Euros by the “Stichting 2015” for the implementation of three sand dams for multiple use in Ethiopia. These sand dams are a component of a larger project in collaboration with the Dutch water boards Velt & Vecht and Hollandse Delta, which will run from 2011 to 2013. The project aims to provide water using sand dams. The water from the dams can be used for cattle breeding, small-scale agriculture as well as clean drinking water. Next to this, the project focuses stronly on governance and management of water supply from sand dams.

Each year ”Stichting 2015” from the municipality of Hardenbeg, selects projects that contribute to the MDGs. This year RAIN Foundation, Vitens-Evidens and SOS kinderdorpen were the lucky nominees. The check was handed over by the mayor of Hardenberg to Robert Meerman from RAIN, at the yearly hot air balloon festival in the municipality of Hardenberg.

Since TheWaterChannel was launched in 2009, it has been receiving frequent requests that some of the videos be made available on discs. Most of this demand came from educational institutions in developing countries, where internet connectivity is often slow and limited. TheWaterChannel carried out among members of Cap-Net, the international network for capacity building in IWRM, a survey to assess the exact nature and extent of this demand. Based on the findings, we recently developed ‘Water Management in Motion,’ a set of 6 DVDs containing videos and learning material covering important issues under 6 themes: IWRM; Climate Change; Water Pollution, Water Quality and Waste Water; Rainwater Harvesting, Recharge, Retention and Reuse;Groundwater Management and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene.

The package can be used for educational and training purposes, conference screening, capacity building activities, and as advocacy tool. It will be distributed free of cost among individuals and institutions engaged in water-related education. We thank all the producers who contributed their videos. This project was supported by Cap-Net, GWP, IFAD,NUFFIC, RAIN, UNESCO-IHE and WGF. If you would like a copy, visit www.thewaterchannel.tv/watermanagementinmotion for more information

More than 120 sector professionals gathered from 27 countries in The Hague to discuss and debate under the banner of the IRC Symposium 2010 “Pumps, Pipes and Promises”. Over three days - from 16-18 November - they presented, heard and discussed almost 40 papers related to costs, finances and accountability.

The IRC 2010 Symposium reflected a shift in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector towards the primacy of services over infrastructure, understanding the need for much greater clarity in planning and financing services that reach people with the regularity and quality they demand.

In particular it demonstrated the need for data that can be understood and used by those who make decisions about finance. One of the key questions was what are the best models for financing construction costs and maintenance and support costs? RAIN presented a paper about micro-credit and rainwater harvesting. Read more…..

RAIN is co-hosting the session ‘The Potential of 3R to Improve Water Quality and Quantity’ at the Stockholm World Water Week. This session will be held on Sunday 5th of September, from 9:00 to 12:30 hrs in room K11 at the premises of the Stockholm World Water Week.

The event is organized by the Rainwater Harvesting Implementation Network (RAIN), Acacia Water, MetaMeta, the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, Germany (BGR) together with Southern & Eastern Africa Rainwater Network (SEARNET) and The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). Furthermore it is sponsored by Aqua for all (A4A) and the Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate (CPWC). Read more...

For more information about 3R, please visit www.bebuffered.com

For further information, including how to get to the venue, please visit: www.worldwaterweek.org

BSP-Nepal and IDE Nepal have joined hands early 2010 to develop a pilot on rainwater harvesting for securing water, food and energy in rural and remote villages in Nepal. Although rainwater harvesting storage capacity often seems to be a limiting factor to make multiple use of rainwater economically and financially feasible, it is found that people tend to manage the water from the rainwater harvesting system very efficiently. A rainwater storage system of 10 cubic metres is sufficient to provide a family with water for drinking and other small domestic uses for a whole year (based upon 5 litres per person per day). The main goal of this pilot is to assess the possibilities and limitations of using rainwater for drinking water, biogas production and irrigation in order to support a livelihood approach in rainwater harvesting projects in rural areas in Nepal. Read more...

Are you interested in RAIN and its project? Do you want to know more about RAIN? Here you can find RAIN's latest newsletter.