Access to improved ‘safe’ water and sanitation particularly in rural areas, throughout the region has been identified as a clear MDG-gap and a priority area for intervention. There are still about 5.3 million Cambodians remaining without access to safe and reliable drinking water sources.

Without safe water and sanitation, sustainable development is impossible. The lack of access to safe water and improved sanitation has many repercussions. Children and girls in particular, are denied their right to education because they are busy fetching water or are discouraged by the lack of separate and decent sanitation facilities at school. Women are forced to spend large parts of their day fetching water. Farmers and wage earners are less productive due to illness, and as a result national economics suffer.

Therefore, our advisory services in this sector are positioned in the framework of Cambodian Rural Development Sector and the National Strategic Development Plan of Cambodia.

Our objectives
To address the above issues, we are working with relevant stakeholders on two priority areas which aims at improve access to better health, drinking water, sanitation and hygiene for the poor.

1. Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All.
2. Functionality of Water Services for Changing Communities

SNV provides both national and international advisers working with a numbers of government institutions, local organizations and development partners to addresses the above two strategic priorities with an emphasis not only on rural areas, but also emerging towns across the country. The multi-stakeholder approach and social inclusion (access to better health, drinking water, sanitation and hygiene) are used to form the governance components.

SNV's advisory services and support will develop and enhance the competencies and capacities of local NGOs and institutions (PDRDS) to be Local Capacity Builders to provide a range of WASH services to communities/villages to:

• Improve the functionality and sustainability of existing infrastructure;
• Encouraging behaviour change and investment in improving and using sanitation facilities to contribute to the Cambodian Millennium Development Goals targets;
• To develop provincial WASH multi-stakeholder platforms.

It is expected that in 2012, 18 000 households will gain access to improved drinking water supplies and 35 000 households will gain access to improved sanitation as a result of our interventions.