Safe Water for Communities

We Get Safe Water Flowing and Keep it Flowing

The majority of Water Mission’s work is focused in remote communities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Before designing a safe water project, we visit a community and assess its needs, including its water source, water quality, and more. Our engineers then design a solution customized to the unique context, raising the industry standard for providing safe, clean water in last-mile communities.

Community-Managed Operation and Maintenance

The Community-Managed Plus program empowers communities to take an active role in the design, construction, and ongoing management of safe water systems. Water Mission facilitates community engagement and mobilization, invests in educating and equipping local leaders, and sets up a Safe Water Committee (SWC) to operate and manage the solution.

Each Water Mission community-managed safe water project follows the following process:

Assessment

As soon as a community requests support from Water Mission, we begin to gather community information that allows us to determine if a project in that community meets our criteria and will be possible. Along with assessing the community’s water source, we consider whether the community is stable and has strong internal leadership.

Design

Once we decide to move forward with a community, we begin to design the size and type of the project to provide clarity on what materials, labor, and resources are needed to begin implementation. We look at project goals, deliverables, tasks, costs, and deadlines.

Community Development

Although community development takes place at every stage, this phase involves working with community stakeholders to prepare for project implementation. As we stay actively involved with the community throughout the entire process, relationships are strengthened and trust is built.

Construction and Installation

In this project phase, Water Mission gathers the required local supplies and labor and begins construction of the safe water project, with support from the community.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Once a water project is completed and WASH promotion has been conducted, Water Mission begins to follow up on a regular basis and provide support as needed for the SWC, WASH Promoters, System Operator, and community members.

Operation & Maintenance (O&M)

We set up a long-term support strategy to maintain systems so they operate smoothly, which is critical for the sustainable delivery of safe water to communities.

Professionalized Services

As safe water solutions increase in complexity, long-term project management can require more advanced technical assistance and oversight from us. Professionalizing the service delivery aspect of our work allows us to provide support on the operation and maintenance of our projects with greater efficiency and scale while reducing the burden on communities.

By doing so, we can deliver a more reliable water supply that meets customers’ long-term needs. Both the Rural Water Cooperative (RWC) and the utility model are types of professionalized services that help us achieve those goals.