Local ownership is essential to the ambitious plan of reaching everyone, forever. Financial and resource investment in solutions by the government, community organizations, local businesses, and community members will help to ensure there are sufficient resources for implementation, maintenance, and expansion of systems. Here’s why:
- First, by requiring cofinancing from our local communities, government, and partners, Water For People helps to instill local financial responsibility and ownership in safe water and sanitation solutions.
- Second, collective investment allows Water For People to impact more people with one project, moving us closer to reaching Everyone without growing our footprint.
Here’s an example of how it worked in Cuchumuela, Bolivia:
With leadership from Water For People–Bolivia, Cuchumuela’s communities and government came together, organized as a group, identified their greatest needs, and decided how much they could afford for new water and sanitation systems. And when it came time to make their financial investments, Water For People was there too, providing funds as part of its cofinancing approach to water and sanitation development.
Through this process, Cuchumuela marshaled great community buy-in and strengthened their financial capacity through a new water-use tariff system to manage the inevitable maintenance and expansion problems.
"At first, the municipal sanitation unit had no equipment or facilities, and I was the only staff person,” says Elvis Rivero Robles, Cuchumuela’s Director of Basic Sanitation. “Partnerships and shared investment became a very important strategy for us, and through this, Cuchumuela will be intent on protecting its hard work to build and maintain its water and sanitation systems.”
The success of Cuchumuela reveals the power of leveraging local partner investment so that communities and municipalities begin important development work and have tangible ownership of their new infrastructure.
Water For People 2010 Leveraged Funding Worldwide
THE ISSUE IS THAT MY FOUNDATION IS A REGISTERED AND I WANT TO BE A REPRESENTATIVE IN GHANA OR A COUNTRY DIRECTOR FOR WATER FOR PEOPLE BY HELPING THE NEEDY.BECAUSE WATER IS LIFE MY TELEPHONE NUMBER IS +233248875544
How sustainable is leveraged co-financing? These people are still going to be dependent upon Water For People for more than half of their water and sanitation funds after the 10 year guarantee that WFP has recently campaigned. Aren't we just setting these people up for continued dependency on a foreign NGO?
Sir, Greetings from the Cameroon League for Developmen (CAMLEAD), a registered ngo based in Cameroon. We will be more delighted should we know how to assist widows and orphans in the rural milieus have portable and quality water as access is still a problem and the government is doing much to redress this matter. I count on you for this assistance. James Tseyah CEO CAMLEAD
I would like be a local memeber how would i join and take the iniactive
Greeting from Social Economic Development Society SEDS in Bangladesh. We are working Poor community people for development water and sanitation program. please send me Membership form.SincerelyHabiburRahman.