WSUP - Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor

Over one billion people worldwide live without clean drinking water and twice as many lack basic sanitation. Countering these staggering statistics is WSUP – Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor – a unique partnership of public, private and charitable organisations.

As a key player in this not-for-profit organisation, Halcrow is at the forefront of efforts to provide water and sanitation to millions of people deprived of this basic right.

WaterAid's water and sanitation projects

A founding member of WSUP in 2004, Halcrow pledged to help achieve the United Nations’ Millennium Development goal to halve the proportion of people living without clean drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

It draws its members from a cross-section of private sector and charitable organisations, including WWF, Wateraid and Care International, along with Thames Water and Unilever. Together, they have the capability and know-how to implement major projects helping between 70,000 and 100,000 people.

Each member contributes their own particular skills and experience, bringing together local and global expertise to provide economic, social and environmentally-sustainable solutions.

Members make an annual contribution to fund WSUP’s core activities, which has a secretariat operating from an office in London. Halcrow donates a significant input to WSUP each year free of charge, sacrificing the income it could otherwise earn from each involved person’s input in fee-paying work. We also provide expert services into WSUP projects, paid for at non-profit rates, thus foregoing the profit on these services that could be earned from other clients.

Halcrow has played a key role in identifying and developing projects, involving more than a dozen members of staff from six Halcrow offices around the world contributing to projects in Kenya, Madagascar, India, Mozambique, Brazil, Nicaragua, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana and Bangladesh.

WSUP projects have two phases – development and implementation. Once WSUP and its local partners have analysed the situation and developed solutions, the project is implemented in collaboration with local service providers.

Projects are funded by international donors from the public and private sectors. The UK government’s Department for International Development and the German development bank KfW are key supporters of the WSUP programme, in particular.

WSUP maintains a key role throughout the implementation phase, ensuring its principles of community involvement and sustainable solutions are at the very heart of the project.

Visit www.wsup.com for more information.