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Water and Sanitation (WASH) is vital in sustainable development and communities that experience Water and Sanitation insecurity are mostly found on the periphery of development. Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation (PHAST) is a course that provides non WASH professionals who find themselves working in WASH sector, technical expertise, techniques and methods that will lead to community management of water and sanitation projects. The course equips professionals with technical skills in developing and enhancing facilitation and communication skills by providing methods that lead to community management of water and sanitation facilities.

The 21st Century has witnessed impacts of Climate Change in many sectors. Having healthy ecosystems play a significant role in providing services to adjust to climate change. Communities have always sought to protect themselves and their valued assets from natural pressures and reduce their vulnerabilities. Recently, increasing interest is being directed towards adaptation approaches that use ecosystem services to build socio-ecological resilience for extreme climatic events.

Development choices today influence the adaptive capacity of people and their governments well into the future. We cannot afford to delay adaptation planning and action. However, many development policies, plans and projects currently do not take climate change into account due to a lack of awareness and clarity on how to effectively develop and integrate adaptation options.

Social protection is a subset of public actions that help address risk, vulnerability and chronic poverty. Social transfers and social services are a long-term investment. They carry lifetime benefits and high individual and social returns. Social protection aims at ensuring groups and individuals to live a fulfilling life, taking into consideration the role of the state in facilitating this, and the vulnerabilities of particular groups or individuals. As a set of policies, social protection consists of interventions which address vulnerabilities and factors which hinder a group or individual's capacity to enjoy a fulfilling life.

Capacities of both women and men must be harnessed so that they can address vulnerable conditions and protect themselves, their families and communities against hazards. By attending this training, participants’ knowledge and skills in integrating gender in the concepts and practices of Community-based disaster risk management (CBDRM) will be strengthened hence aiding them in addressing this critical developmental challenge.

After independence, the first president was interested in achieving three things for the country; ie the eradication of extreme poverty, illiteracy, and extreme hunger. This was necessitated by the fact that then and through the colonial system, Kenyans had been treated as second-class citizens which increased their vulnerability and exposure to the three issues. However, this was not achieved then and subsequent governments have been trying to address these issues by encompassing them in development plans and policies. The promulgation of the new Kenyan constitution in 2010, brought forth government’s commitment to providing for vulnerable populations that are unable to meet their basic needs, including women, children, older persons and the youth. Kenya’s economic blueprint (Vision 2030) contends that “no society can gain social cohesion if significant sections of the population live in abject poverty.” Reducing vulnerability and poverty is a key element of many social policies across government ministries in Kenya.

Developing countries’ disaster profiles are dominated by droughts, fires, floods, technological accidents, diseases and epidemics that disrupt people’s livelihoods, destroy the infrastructure, divert planned use of resources, interrupt economic activities and retard development. In addition to this, a fast-tracked pace of development in the developing world has brought with it the perils of precarious living, pressures on non-renewable resources, densely populated spaces that are unplanned, unsafe and risky and environmental degradation among others. As a consequence, the frequency of disasters such as earthquakes, floods, cyclones, landslides, droughts, and fire outbreaks has gone up. Something needs to be done.

Modern day organizations and governments have embraced Cash transfer programming (CTP) to address the needs of communities during disasters and early development period. CTP has become popular because it gives dignity back to people and is seen as an appropriate emergency response to provide for the immediate needs for food and non-food items. This approach is also used to support the recovery of livelihoods after disasters and put communities back on the path to development.