Everyone Forever: Reaching Every Household, School, and Clinic with Reliable Water and Sanitation

Equipping communities and local government with the tools and capacity to ensure water continues to flow for generations to come.

The Problem

As a result of the global water and sanitation crisis, 2.1 billion people still lack access to safe water and 4.5 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. Women and children spend on average more than four hours walking for water collection each day, and more than 840,000 people die each year from water-related diseases.

Access to safe drinking water and hygienic sanitation is the foundation that allows all other development to happen. Without it, communities are at risk for disease, which keeps adults from working and children out of school.

The Solution

We know that to end the global water crisis, it is not enough to merely dig wells and install pumps. Time and time again, this approach has failed. 15% of pumps break down after one year of installation and 25% by their fourth year, forcing communities to return to fetching water from long distances. Water For People developed Everyone Forever as a unique programmatic effort to provide water and sanitation in targeted districts and an approach that can be used for greater replication. Most importantly, we believe that it is the solution that will fundamentally shift the industry’s approach to the water and sanitation crisis. Everyone Forever offers an ambitious but simple framework, adaptable to the assets and challenges of any country context:

  • Everyone – Reliable service to safe water for every household, clinic, and school
  • Everyone pays – Communities and local government are required to invest from the get-go and build financial capacity for the future
  • Monitoring – Data is collected annually for accountability, transparency, and continuous program improvement
  • Aid independence – Every community and district have strong institutions to meet their own basic needs without ongoing foreign aid
  • Replication & Scale – Everyone Forever is taken up in non‐Water For People districts and countries, driven by advocacy and local demand

We currently work in over 30 districts across nine countries to bring lasting water services to over 4 million people. Our work in each country is fitted for that country’s unique context. However, the common thread between all of our work is a cooperative approach that exists between national and local government and/or community organizations. Our strategy seeks to demonstrate that together, with these collaborative efforts and focus on sustainability, we can bring water to people as quickly as possible.

Stage of Development

  • Early Stage
  • Established Prototype
  • Scaling
  • Other

Organization to Receive Funds

Water For People

This project was nominated by: