Partners
Lasting improvements in public services happen through the people who own and drive them — governments, providers, experts, leaders accountable to their own communities. We work with them all to build and champion sustainable services.
Government first
Public services are the responsibility of the state, so that is where we begin — alongside the people who govern, from district authorities to national ministries and heads of state. In the districts where we work, we help build the partnership around government: providers, community leaders, researchers, civil society and financiers all getting behind a single plan the district owns and drives — one that will still be standing long after we’ve gone. That is the foundation. But a district plan only holds if the nation behind it does too. So the same work now runs to the top: head-of-state compacts that commit a government to universal access, finance strategies that turn water and sanitation from a line item into investment, finance ministers brought into the room with water ministers. Water and sanitation are the way in; the systems they enable and are part of – the next step.
No one does this alone
District work only changes a country if it travels — up into national policy, and out across borders. That is what our alliances are for. With Water For People we run the One For All alliance under a shared Destination 2030 strategy: one set of goals, a deliberate division of labour, a reach neither of us has alone. Through Agenda for Change we hold to common principles with like-minded organisations — our building-block framework a shared diagnostic. And through Sanitation and Water for All, the UN-hosted partnership, we help put safe water and sanitation in front of the people who can commit a nation to it, up to heads of state.