Partners for progress

By WaterAid's Chief Executive, Barbara Frost

Barbara Frost on a project visit in Tanzania.

Credit: WaterAid / Andrew Lawrence

I have now been WaterAid's Chief Executive since late last year and every day I feel humbled to be leading such a wonderful organisation.

WaterAid's supporters, trustees, staff and partners are so committed and passionate about our work helping to bring safe water, sanitation and hygiene education to some of the economically poorest people in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region.

We often use the word 'partners' and here I would like to talk more about why we work with partners and who they are.

Firstly, you may have read about our alliance partners - WaterAid America and Australia - which help finance our work. We also work with them globally to influence water and sanitation policies to include affordable and accessible solutions to help bring an end to poverty.

In our country programmes we work with local partner organisations that are directly responsible for delivering safe water, sanitation and hygiene education and also for influencing policy and practice at a national and local level. These partners might be local community based organisations, small scale private providers or local governments.

When WaterAid was established 25 years ago one of the guiding principles was the importance of working alongside local organisations to help them build and develop their own organisations to deliver safe water. This was seen as the way to promote long term sustainable solutions owned by communities - a developmental approach to our work rather than a quick fix.

Over the years WaterAid has provided technical advice, funding and support of organisational development to a wide range of partners and our evaluations have demonstrated just how important this is if the work is going to continue.

Globally we also work in 'partnership' with governments, international donors, multilateral institutions and the business community in their quest to deliver safe water and sanitation. Our role is to bring to the table the experiences of our local partners and to emphasise the importance of ensuring this work is sustainable, affordable and accessible so that safe water, sanitation and hygiene education reach marginalised and poor people.

Our success depends on the work of our partners as well as our many supporters. Together we are reaching out to over million people a year.

Find out more about WaterAid's partnership work.