Introducing WSUP

Over one billion people worldwide live without clean, safe drinking water and over two billion without basic sanitation.

WSUP - Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor - exists to help change that. To provide the water and sanitation that the rest of us take for granted.

Working in poor urban areas, WSUP is an innovative organisation that brings together local and global expertise to provide sustainable water and sanitation solutions for poor communities

Why is WSUP needed? The figures speak for themselves. Conventional approaches have failed to reach the poorest people effectively or quickly enough - especially in urban areas.

WSUP takes a new approach

Our mandate is to support local service providers around the world to deliver affordable and sustainable water and sanitation services to poor people in urban communities.

We work with local communities right from the start of every project and the partnership continues throughout the whole process.

WSUP is itself a partnership - between public, private and civil society organisations - and provides a new model that engages businesses and communities to achieve real, meaningful and practical solutions. It is a not-for-profit organisation.

WSUP's members each contribute their particular skills and experience, pooling their strengths for greater effectiveness and reach.

The Millennium Development Goals call for the proportion of people living without access to water and Sanitation to be halved by 2015.

WSUP can make a major contribution to that goal.

WSUP projects proceed in two phases:

• A development phase, where WSUP and local partners analyse and assess the local situation, and design solutions. WSUP attracts and invests donor funds to make this process as open, involving and effective as possible.
• An implementation phase – led by a local service provider – where the project is made into reality. Although the operation is locally managed, WSUP maintains a central involvement in this phase, to ensure that the principles of community involvement and sustainable solutions are always followed.

Our commitment to open and accountable partnerships and to sustainable and technically robust solutions makes us an effective and forward-looking choice or investing in the lives of the urban poor.

WSUP works with urban communities worldwide, wherever water and sanitation are badly needed and where we can make a difference. We welcome invitations from any city anywhere in the world where we might be able to help.

WSUP – cutting edge, creative, cooperative, sustainable solutions to one of the world’s greatest problems.