1. Introduction

Timely and effective provision of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in emergencies reduces health risks and provides disaster-affected populations with dignity and protection, while contributing to the empowerment of women and long-term poverty and vulnerability reduction.

WASH is integral to all other elements of emergency relief and human development and is central to the ‘Humanitarian’ and ‘Right to Food, Water and Nutrition’ Impact Areas of CARE’s Vision 2030 and to Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In FY21 CARE had substantial WASH programs[1] in 15 countries including Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.  In total the work in these countries reached 9.6 million people over the year.  Another 2 million people were supported by smaller projects in 46 additional countries.

The Emergency WASH global team comprises WASH experts from around the CARE Confederation. Core staff are employed by CARE Australia, CARE Canada (as part of CARE’s Rapid Response Team (RRT)) and CARE USA. Our wider team network is drawn from WASH staff in CARE country presences and members, and we work closely with the CARE USA Water+ team (within Food and Water Systems) collaborating to develop proposals and provide technical support. Our capacity is further enhanced by a roster of external specialists, the majority of whom have WASH experience with CARE.

The Emergency WASH global team offers outstanding technical support, in person or remotely. Our Offer of Service describes our areas of focus and introduces the team.

This page of the CARE Emergency Toolkit provides brief introductions to the main technical areas of emergency WASH, and important themes for WASH program quality and mainstreaming.  It isn’t a prescriptive guide for what to do in every WASH emergency, as it is always necessary to develop activities and objectives on the local context and needs, however examples from recent projects, templates and tip sheets are provided as links.

We welcome any feedback on the content here, please contact the team here.

[1] Substantial programs being defined as those reaching over 50,000 beneficiaries each.