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
