WASH skills Development Organization (WASH-SDO) implements the BMZ-financed project "Decentralised Water and Sanitation Solutions for Small Towns in Cambodia and Laos", together with its partner office Environmental Sanitation Cambodia (ESC).

A consultancy awarded to the Consortium for DEWATS Dissemination (CDD, India) was adapting existing DEWATS training material into a full training package — presentations, a general manual and a trainer manual — and will deliver a five-day master trainer programme in the second half of November 2026, following the contract signature in August. The format is hybrid: delivered online from India with each country office gathered in one room. Master trainers then deliver a micro-level training to CamSaN members and local organisations at the end of December 2026, with a national learning-exchange workshop in late November or early December, and a training for the Ministry of Public Works and Transport in 2027.

That sequence produces trained individuals and a good training package. It does not, by itself, produce either of the two things the project is measured on.

The first gap — an institutional programme, not a series of trainings

At project objective level the logical framework requires that one national institution or local higher education institution per country has established a self-standing, gender-responsive training programme for decentralised sanitation solutions. At output level it requires that training material integrating climate-resilient and gender-responsive approaches has been validated by at least two national institutions. The consolidated M&E review of August 2026 assessed the validation indicator as delayed at approximately 13 per cent, with no validation yet achieved in either country.