Welcome, Bienvenue, Bienvenido to Akvopedia! Welcome to Akvopedia, the open water and sanitation resource that anyone can edit. The goal of Akvopedia is to improve water and sanitation projects through knowledge exchange on smart and affordable technical solutions and effective approaches. Akvopedia now contains 2,211 articles in English. In the coming months, two new portals called Emergency and Sustainability will be developed, and our most recent addition, the Finance Portal, is now more fully updated and extended. Water Portal The Water Portal contains information on water collection, pumping and transportation, storage, treatment, and use of water. Sanitation Portal The Sanitation Portal contains information on toilets, collection, transportation, treatment, use of products, hygiene, and training materials. Finance Portal - NEW! The Finance Portal contains information on the costs needed to finance, how to finance these costs, and how to monitor finance. Approaches Portal The Approaches Portal contains information on product development, service delivery, finance, promotion, and support systems. What's happening now Financing flows in the water and sanitation sector at national level. Source: GLAAS 2012, page 79 Akvopedia in partnership with the IRC presents its totally refurbished Finance Portal. Our new Finance Portal is based on the three crucial steps of financing a project: Understand how to determine the costs of your project (from start to finish); Learn about the different methods of financing or how to find the appropriate funders for your situation and region, who can finance these costs; Monitor your costs over time, using our many finance tools that are available or in development. For example, learn about the three "Ts": Taxes, Transfers, and Tariffs. These are the methods used to finance projects. They are also referred to as Financing Sources. More news NEW ARTICLE PAGE: Lifeskills: Football for Water. The main goal of the program is to improve drinking water and sanitation facilities at 1,100 schools in Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique. Furthermore, more than 700,000 school children will be taught life skills related to hand washing, clean drinking water and improved sanitation through football and life skills coaches (WorldCoaches). SANITATION FIRST!! 2.6 billion people in the world don't have access to a toilet. The reality of what this means may be hard for us lucky toilet-owners to imagine, so here's an animation to help. Check out this new helpful Sustainable Sanitation Sourcebook in the training of professionals for the sanitation and water sector, browse or download the set of animated PowerPoints. There are 500 slides and 600 pages worth of valuable sanitation information!! NEW ARTICLE PAGE: Biogas-fueled pump - Using biogas for pumps in irrigation is gaining in popularity in India and elsewhere, as the savings in petroleum fuel prices are great. A diesel pump can also be converted into a bio-gas pump used for pumping water. The cheapest way to get biogas, once a pump is obtained, is to build a biomass digester, which means biomass must be collected, cultivated, or found. Contributing to Akvopedia Share your news and knowledge on water and sanitation by contributing articles to the Akvopedia. We've used the same conventions as the well-known online resource Wikipedia, so adding and editing articles is quick and easy to learn. This graphical guide will get you started; more detailed information about editing wiki articles is available in the help pages: Help:Contents Mailing list - Participate in the Akvopedia mailing list. The Akvopedia mailing list is open to anyone who wants to discuss or follow the content work we are doing on the Akvopedia. Contact us to be added to the list. To get an edit account, please send an email to winonaakvo.org. Editorial support Do you have quality content that you would like to contribute to Akvopedia, but lack the time or resources to upload it? Akvopedia offers free editorial services and always appreciates suggestions and links to expand our WASH wiki. Please contact our editor Winona Azure at winonaakvo.org. Thank you for visiting!