Dorcas
Dorcas is an international organisation that provides humanitarian assistance and facilitates development cooperation. Investing in sustainable change for those who live in poverty, are excluded, or are caught in a crisis. Dorcas works in 14 countries across Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Eastern Africa, reaching over one million people annually.
What we do
Dorcas generic approach to change falls under three focus areas:
- Humanitarian Assistance and Recovery (core principle: saving lives in disaster situations)
- Social Empowerment and Protection (core principle: safe and flourishing communities and societies)
- Inclusive Entrepreneurship (core principle: creating jobs and resilient livelihoods).
Throughout all these programmes our focus is on those communities and groups within communities that are most excluded from access to services. Dorcas operates through country offices led by local staff, and in cooperation with national and international stakeholders.
Our WASH approach
Dorcas uses an entrepreneurial approach for WASH whereby preferably SME’s, individuals and groups, play a role in the construction, management, maintenance and marketing of WASH solutions/systems. Dorcas’ own role changes at the different levels – from awareness creation and capacity building of SME’s to coordinator or process facilitator in a multi-stakeholder collaboration. Moreover, we use a concept of Developing Resilient Entrepreneurship and Access to Market Systems (DREAMS) that focuses on access to inclusive basic services through identification and development of market-based solutions, inclusive business models and social marketing. WASH activities include, for example, water trucking as well as borehole rehabilitation and the set-up of WASH committees.