WaterAid-funded project work

Credit: WaterAid / Jon Spaull

Directly funding local partner organisations to help communities set up and maintain water, sanitation and hygiene activities will remain by far the largest area of spending for WaterAid.

Our partners; non governmental organisations (NGOs), local and national governments and local private sector organisations; are best placed to understand the needs and challenges within their areas. We seek to develop our partners to enable them to both deliver effective projects and challenge and develop policies surrounding water and sanitation.

In the year 2004-2005, WaterAid helped 610,000 people gain access to safe water and 540,000 people gain access to sanitation. In the same year WaterAid invested 17% of its programme funding in urban work.

• By 2010 WaterAid will fund local partner organisations to ensure one million people gain access to water and one million people gain access to sanitation facilities every year.
  
  
• As more poor people move to urban settlements without adequate services WaterAid will also give a higher priority to its urban work, investing 30% of its annual programme spending in this area by 2010.
  
  
• To reflect the fact that more people lack sanitation than water, WaterAid will prioritise its sanitation and hygiene work.
  
  
• The shift from isolated, individual projects to larger programmes that help develop the capacities of district and national government to reach the poorest people will continue.

Equity, sustainability and impact on poverty

As WaterAid is committed to funding projects that provide long-term and sustainable benefits, greater emphasis will be placed on monitoring project sustainability. Ensuring poor people have an informed say on the water, sanitation and hygiene facilities that suit them best is vital in achieving this.

The simple act of washing hands with soap and water can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40%.

We will also seek to maximise the impact that these projects have on communities as a whole, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. As such we will further develop our ability to identify and work with those people who are excluded from accessing water and sanitation on the basis of economic or social factors such as ethnicity, religion, gender, age, social status or HIV/AIDS.

Integrated water resource management

WaterAid recognises that water resources must be properly managed to ensure there is equity in access and that water supplies are sustainable. Greater emphasis will therefore be placed on water resource management, specifically:

• WaterAid and its partners will continue to investigate the likely sustainability of water sources before project work is started and ensure that water quality is maintained over time.

• Where poor people's access to drinking water is adversely affected by competing water needs WaterAid will lobby for the voices of the poor to be heard in the decisions affecting water resource allocation.

• WaterAid and its partners will make any relevant hydro-geological data about water resources that they have access to available to others.

Planning for the future

WaterAid will concentrate its project work in the following 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia; and four countries in South Asia: Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. However if the planned growth rates are achieved WaterAid will review the possibility of expanding into new countries after 2009/10.