Current rural sanitation practitioners and decision makers are faced with insufficient information on the relative performance of different programming approaches. These approaches are frequently defined either too tightly, or too loosely, which stifles innovation, learning and opportunities to combine and tailor approaches to the changing contexts in which they operate. The cost of facilitating and delivering these approaches is often not well understood or monitored.

To address this, Plan International, WaterAid and UNICEF are conducting a review to consolidate existing evidence and experiences on these issues, with an aim to develop guidance documents for rural sanitation programme policy-makers, planners and implementers.

This joint effort has three tasks:
1. Review of rural sanitation. Read 'Rethinking Rural Sanitation Approaches', a brief summarising the highlights from the analysis of the predominant rural sanitation approaches. To know more, see the background report 'Review of Rural Sanitation Approaches'.
2. Development of a rural sanitation costings guidance (ongoing).
3. Development of a rural sanitation approaches guidance (ongoing).