The Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments (RISE) programme aims to demonstrate a new approach to water and sanitation management in urban informal settlements. RISE is an action-research programme utilizing a randomized control trial (RCT) methodology involving 24 informal settlements (12 in each country). The RISE theory of change is that the water sensitive cities (WSC) approach can interrupt the fecal-oral transmission route, resulting in an improvement in human gastrointestinal health, especially for children under 5 years of age.