With the view to enhancing access to safe and clean drinking water for the most vulnerable communities in remote and hard-to-reach areas of the country, OWS DF has been providing WaSH services in partnership with various development and humanitarian actors. The Wash services mainly include establishing water schemes, rehabilitation of water sources, water tracking, strengthening sustainable water management systems, and distribution of WaSH NFIs and purification chemicals. Moreover, to improve sanitation and hygiene services for the community awareness-raising campaigns related to increasing knowledge and promoting better practices were addressed. To reduce the outbreak of diseases related to poor sanitation and hygiene construction of gender-segregated latrines is also part of WaSH response. OWS DF WaSH services extend to public institutions including schools and health facilities.

OWS DF over the past 20 years reached more than 350,000 vulnerable communities with various WaSH services in remote areas of Somali and SNNPR regions in Ethiopia.

To ensure the appropriateness and relevance of response OWS DF heavily relies on the needs and priorities of the people in need.  WaSH services adopt important approaches related to safe programming and mainstreaming crosscutting issues including gender, disability, protection, PSEA, and AAP.

Accordingly, to ensure a higher degree of accountability and transparency to people of concern as well as to deliver context-appropriate, safe, and quality responses in target locations OWS DF has a strong AAP system. This allows a system to share appropriate and timely information and collect community feedback, and response mechanisms. Program personnel have a clear understanding of the accountability system, and how to gather feedback and respond. Staff has the necessary skills and knowledge of the tools and procedures designed to enforce the AAP system. Moreover, OWS DF is committed to fostering active participation in the community with special emphasis on entertaining the voices of vulnerable and marginalized groups in major decision-making processes affecting them. To this end, in consultation with the affected community and stakeholders effective communication channels concerning the decimation of information about the program, distribution date and schedule, information on their entitlements, and rights, and available complaint and feedback mechanisms are devised. As a result, relevant and timely information is shared with the beneficiaries and stakeholders; thereby promoting transparency across the activities.

Context-appropriate compliance and feedback mechanisms are put in place in consultation with the affected community and relevant stakeholders to ensure sustainability, ownership, and appropriateness of the services. Community feedback mechanisms such as help-desk, complaint-handling committee, suggestion box, hotline, and notice board are established.

OWS DF has strong working relationships with the government and other stakeholders to optimize the benefit of the affected population. So as to avoid duplication of efforts and resources OWS DF effectively utilizes and contributes to the cluster coordination mechanisms at the national and sub-national levels.