Shelter and WASH Services
Shelter and WASH are life-sustaining sectors. For shelter, candidates must know the shelter ladder (from emergency shelter → transitional shelter → durable housing), shelter and settlement approaches, site planning (space standards, drainage, access, fire breaks), and NFI (non-food item) distribution. Understand tenure and land rights, owner-driven reconstruction, and protection in shelter. For WASH, know the components: water supply (quantity, quality, access), sanitation (latrines, excreta management), hygiene promotion, and solid waste management. Be familiar with Sphere standards (e.g., water quantity per person per day, latrine ratios, distance to water points) as indicative benchmarks, and the F-diagram (fluids, fingers, flies, fields, food) for transmission routes.
Common traps: treating Sphere indicators as rigid targets rather than context-sensitive benchmarks; ignoring drainage and site planning in shelter (flooding and fire risk); placing latrines without considering safety, gender, and distance; assuming water quantity alone ensures safety without quality and access.
Rule of thumb: WASH interventions should block transmission routes - water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste together. When a scenario describes diarrhoeal disease, the answer usually combines safe water, sanitation, and hygiene promotion, not a single measure. For shelter, prefer options that move people up the ladder toward durable, tenure-secure solutions.