The next steps

Washing in the morning sun in Nepal.

Credit: WaterAid / Josh Hobbins

Since its inception in 1981 WaterAid has been dedicated to its vision of a world in which everyone has access to safe water.

Safe water and sanitation are now recognised as human rights, vital for everyone in the world, yet millions of people still do not have access to them. The lack of these essential services traps people in a stranglehold of poverty, and causes a child to die every 15 seconds from water-related diseases.

WaterAid believes that water, sanitation and hygiene education are vital for the health, well being and dignity of poor people, and that when combined they form the foundation for all other development, providing the key to poverty reduction.

To direct its work over the coming years WaterAid has just published its third strategy which runs from 2005 to 2010. In it WaterAid sets out its ambitious steps to make a significant contribution to the Millennium Development Goals, targets agreed by all world governments, of reducing world poverty through actions including halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation by 2015.

WaterAid's future plans include funding local partner organisations to ensure one million people gain access to water and one million people gain access to sanitation facilities every year by 2010; increasing expenditure on its urban work, and integrating water resource management in all of its projects to ensure they last long into the future.

WaterAid will also work to demonstrate that sustainable and equitable water and sanitation services are essential to achieve the overall Millennium Development Goal of poverty reduction, and the targets on health, education and the environment.

The strategy's five-year time frame coincides with the first half of the UN International Decade for Action called Water for life. This gives WaterAid an unprecedented opportunity to push for water, sanitation and hygiene for all in an international arena, giving more of the world's poorest people the chance of a better future.