In December 2007, WSUP was awarded an US $11.3 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The grant will allow the organisation to test an innovative approach to improving water, sanitation and hygiene services in order to improve the health, economic and social well being of the urban poor. WSUP will not deliver water and sanitation services directly to the urban poor but instead will build the capacity of local service providers to do so. The goal is to establish a robust model that can be replicated and sustained in cities across the world.

The project aims to:

• test this approach in four cities, delivering two Implementation Projects providing improved water and sanitation services to approx 360,000 people, and four Development Phase Projects.
• share its learnings with practitioners and encourage take up of similar approaches through its Institutional Capacity Building work.
• ensure that the capacity to manage the environmental impacts of water and sanitation is in place.
• measure the impact of the project on the consumer, service provider capacity and ability of local authorities to replicate the approach.

With funding from the grant, WSUP will assist local water and sanitation providers in Mozambique and Madagascar to provide services to a total of 360,000 people.  These service providers will build capacity to serve the poor and to sustain and expand these services by strengthening links with poor communities, regulators and other key stakeholders. The grant will also support early stage project development in Gatwekera and Dhaka, together with an environmental management component.

The activities, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will contribute to reaching WSUP’s broader vision for the sector through:

• demonstrating how government and LSPs can deliver water, sanitation and hygiene to the urban poor at scale, in ways that can be replicated within the country/region.
• applying practical learning to build the competence of key LSP/ government staff in the provision of water, sanitation and hygiene to the urban poor.
• ensuring that capacity for providing environmental safeguards around water and sanitation provision is in place.
• analysing data from the above work to provide lessons for the uptake of the sector, including the Gates Foundation Learning Initiative, for provision of basic services to the urban poor at greater scale.

The grant is being made by the Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  The Global Development Program works with motivated partners to create opportunities for people to lift themselves out of poverty and hunger.