The MWA is a unique permanent alliance of international NGOs with experience in water supply, hygiene education and promotion of sanitation. We facilitate cooperation with international and local NGOs and other stakeholders in the WASH sector to build consensus on appropriate WASH policies and effective solutions.
MWA builds strong permanent partnerships that create replicable models. Working as an Alliance allows us to take these models to scale and expand our impact. We build indigenous capacity in order to meet the clean water and sanitation requirements of millions. The Alliance operates in a synergistic manner by sharing resources, exchanging information, and seeking the best sustainable solutions to common problems.
- Expanded Scope and Reach. Bringing NGO’s together in a permanent Alliance creates a significantly larger impact than any one NGO could. Sharing resources and learning offers improved solutions for the beneficiary communities and their governance systems, it also increases the capacity of our members.
- Improved Learning and Monitoring and Evaluation. The Alliance builds upon the standards and best practices of our members. The MWA facilitates establishing a coherent overarching system for measuring and evaluating our impact. The synergies of the Alliance enable effective research analysis to better identify the issues that encourage behavioral change and to pilot the potential solutions.
- Expanded Resources. The MWA has contributed to increased funding for the WASH sector with the passage and funding of the Water for the Poor Act. In addition, MWA is successfully leveraging funding for our specific programs. The small amount of initial seed money – less than $1M – has grown to support multimillion dollar programs with funding from a number of different sources. The MWA, its sub recipients and the beneficiary communities also contribute to success of the programs.
- Focus on Millennium Development Goals. The MWA embraces the MDG #7, which intends to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. MWA’s programming is helping to achieve this goal with sustainable, scalable and replicable programs. It is also improving the dignity and standard of living of the most vulnerable households and communities.
- Enhanced Advocacy. Speaking with one voice for the WASH sector increases our effectiveness to advocate in the US and globally. The Alliance is the melting pot from which a single purpose has been formed. Documented evidence from the field combined with the unified voice enables the MWA to be an effective WASH advocate for policy and funding in the US and in our programming countries.
The MWA offers a new breed of NGO assistance, one that declares there is more to gain for stakeholders, especially for the people in the communities, in cooperation than in competition. Our experience shows that programming with a long-term horizon, rather than short term projects, produce much higher levels of learning through sharing and provocative probing that benefits local communities, implementers and donors.
The MWA believes that access to water and sanitation is essential for overcoming poverty and social injustice, improving health and developing sustainable livelihoods. We are unique in the WASH sector by offering a permanent alliance of organizations that are able to build capacity at local, regional and national levels to reach our vision of a world where everybody is able to use safe water, has access to basic sanitation, and practices good hygiene.
