Tag Archives: water and sanitation

Oxfam Archives: water and sanitation

20th century, Modern, Social Sciences, Spotlight, ,

Oxfam is a world leading expert in public health in emergencies. We recently put on a small display of material from the Oxfam archive showing how the development of its work in water and sanitation, both in humanitarian emergencies and longer term development, is recorded in the archive. Documents included reports, photographs, information booklets, posters, and files relating to grants made for water and sanitation work. A few have been highlighted in the photos below.

Display of documents from the Oxfam Archive relating to water and sanitation

Display of documents from the Oxfam Archive relating to water and sanitation

One of the first references to water projects in the archive is this photo of Winifred Coate, a retired headmistress turned relief worker who struck water in the ‘waterless desert’ at Zerqa, north of Amman, Jordan, in 1963 with the help of an Oxfam grant. This supported a very successful community of Palestinian refugees.

Photograph: Winifred Coate at Zerqa, 1963 (Oxfam Archive, Bodleian Libraries MS. Oxfam COM/5/1/94 Folder 2)

Photograph: Winifred Coate at Zerqa, 1963. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Oxfam COM/5/1/94.

A  leading figure in Oxfam’s work in water and sanitation was Jim Howard (1926-2003); a water engineer by training, he joined Oxfam in 1965 as Field Director in India.

Oxfam Sanitation Units

Photographs: Oxfam Sanitation Units in use in Bangladesh, 1970s. Photo taken by Jim Howard. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Oxfam COM/5/1/12.

When he started, Oxfam was not itself operational but granted funds for work to local organisations. In a report in October 1966, Howard suggests that it may be time for Oxfam to do more and increase its specialisation in water:

‘I look forward very much to the time when Oxfam….. offers skill as well as funds. We could for instance, narrow our field to water resources, well-drilling, simple irrigation techniques, and make this our speciality.’

Brochures for the Oxfam Sanitation Unit developed by Jim Howard and produced by Marston Excelsior Ltd., 1976-1978. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Oxfam PRG/5/5/14.

Brochures for the Oxfam Sanitation Unit developed by Jim Howard and produced by Marston Excelsior Ltd., 1976-1978. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Oxfam PRG/5/5/14.

From 1970, Howard worked with Oxfam as Technical Officer and Chief Engineer. He developed a sanitation unit that could be brought in to emergency situations and rapidly set up. He was in the front line of virtually every major international emergency between 1965 and 1991, when he retired, including the Bihar famine in the late 1960s, when Oxfam first became operational in emergency work, the Bengal refugee crisis, 1971, Cambodia, 1979, the Ethiopian famine, 1984-1985, and the aftermath in Iraq of the first Gulf War, 1991.
Journalist John Pilger said of Howard:

‘In all my career, going to places of upheaval, I’ve never seen the course of human suffering turned back by one person as I did with Jim Howard in Cambodia.’

The display also featured examples of material produced for the general public relating to Oxfam’s work in water and sanitation, calculated to raise funds and raise awareness:

poster and advert-smallThe following mailing focuses on Oxfam’s water and sanitation work in emergencies, particularly the work it was at that time carrying out in refugee camps and feeding centres following famine in Ethiopia.

An appeal for regular donations sent out to supporters of Oxfam, featuring Jim Howard, 1985. Oxfam Archive, Bodleian Libraries, MS Oxfam APL/3/6/6 Folder 2

An appeal for regular donations sent out to supporters of Oxfam, featuring Jim Howard, 1985. Oxford, Bodleian Library,  MS Oxfam APL/3/6/6 .

Agencies such as Oxfam are increasingly considering gender when planning water and sanitation projects, for example whether facilities are placed in safe locations for women to use and whether female beneficiaries have the opportunity to make their needs known.

Issue of Oxfam's Gender and Development journal, Volume 18:1, March 2010 focusing on water. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Oxfam PRG/9/8/1/8.

Issue of Oxfam’s Gender and Development journal, Volume 18:1, March 2010 focusing on water. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Oxfam PRG/9/8/1/8.

The first four Oxfam Archive catalogues are available to view via the Bodleian’s Online Catalogue of Archives and Manuscripts by searching for ‘Oxfam’.

For more information on the Oxfam Archive cataloguing project please view our project page

The Oxfam archive

20th century, Humanities, Medical, Modern, Social Sciences, Spotlight, , ,

Following the donation of the Oxfam archive to the Bodleian Libraries in late 2012, sorting and cataloguing began in February. The work is being approached in three 18 month phases, with a tranche of the archive becoming available to researchers at the completion of each stage.  Our first selection of material will be accessible by June 2014, with the entire historic archive becoming available to researchers in June 2017.

Work on the first area of programme policy and management targetted has now been completed. This includes the minutes and papers of the Overseas Aid Committee, which began as the Grants Sub-committee in 1955, considering applications for funding; the Field Committees for Africa, Asia and other regions to which this responsibility was delegated between 1963 and 1992; and their successor, the ‘Single’ Overseas Committee. All set policy for the international programme, supported by bodies like the Medical Advisory Panel (from 1965).  The Panel was composed of senior staff and external experts and offered advice on aspects of policy, such as Oxfam’s attitude to and work on diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis, and on sensitive issues such as family planning.

Below is an early ‘note’ by the Panel laying out its thinking on objectives and criteria for assistance, with an emphasis on health education, arguing that ‘Hospitals and hospital services provide focal points not only for the treatment of disease, but also for its prevention, and for the training of personnel and popular education.’ The importance of the provision of clean water is also recognised. Water and sanitation were to become a particular Oxfam specialism in the following decades.

Oxfam first blog post image

Records like these are part of a web of information for the researcher, where one could have as a starting point perhaps the published annual grants lists summarising each grant made to every country Oxfam worked in in a particular year, leading out to the decision-making level described above, and at the other, administrative extreme, to the ‘project’ or grant file containing correspondence with the recipient and reports on outcomes and impacts on communities of the use of the grant. All of these sources will form part of the final catalogue.