Cova

Cova is a nonprofit social enterprise providing rural communities in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador with access to safe drinking water solutions. Through Cova’s innovative market-based Circuit Rider Model, rural communities in Central America have access to safe drinking water, creating economic opportunities for individuals and improving health, allowing children to attend school, parents to be present for work, and communities to thrive. Cova’s comprehensive model provides safe drinking water to over 1 million people across 2,100 rural communities.
With an on-the-ground staff in Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador, Cova is a locally-managed organization dedicated to comprehensively implementing drinking water solutions that ensure a long-term, positive impact. Our strong partnerships with local communities, private entities, universities, NGOs, and governmental organizations have helped us expand our reach and increase our effectiveness as we carry out our mission of building stronger communities.
All solutions are locally operated and require co-financing from rural community clients. Our program demonstrates that investing just pennies a day per person dramatically reduces the incidence of waterborne disease and saves lives.

Our program specifically targets rural communities in Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador, where the majority of residents are subsistence farmers earning $3-6 per day and lack access to safe drinking water. The goal of Cova’s Circuit Rider (CR) model is to empower rural communities with access to safe drinking water, resulting in an improved standard of living, poverty reduction, and increased educational and economic opportunities.
Circuit Riders, trained water technicians who circulate between communities to provide water system support and training, form the foundation of Cova’s safe water model. Through the implementation of our Circuit Rider (CR) model, the Cova program leverages our more than decade-long experience empowering local communities with access to safe drinking water. Each community boasts a dedicated water board comprising 5-7 local volunteers overseeing the water system's operations. Through capacity building, watershed analysis, education, and innovative financing, the capacity of community water boards to manage their own water systems is strengthened.

Strategy 1: Implement the Circuit Rider Model; Provide post-construction support to rural communities through our Circuit Rider Model.

Strategy 2: Transition Water Quality Monitoring; Community leaders will take over the monthly water quality monitoring activities.

Strategy 3: Scale Circuit Rider Model – Reach 3MM People by 2026; As communities demonstrate self-sufficiency,
Cova will transition into new districts.

Strategy 4: Share Best Practices and Circuit Rider Model Expertise; Cova will share with evidence the experiences of its professional water service model to enable larger growth and adoption nationally and globally.

Strategy 5: Drive Financial Performance Through Blended Finance to Scale Impact; Leverage market-based solutions, philanthropic capital, and impact investments to improve overall operations, support growth, and scale impact.

Cova sees the people we are trying to help as partners instead of beneficiaries. Charity alone cannot solve the world's most challenging problems. Community ownership is a critical component of sustainable development. Cova's strategy centers on effective and efficient marketing built around the empowerment of local leaders and communities. Fundamentally, the community, through its leaders, brings the program to fruition by lending its support, guidance, and leadership. Cova does not provide 100% financing for projects; instead, we seek local funding to ensure local ownership, requiring co-financing from all involved. Our program has been designed to build up the capacity of the communities to operate sustainably within three years, resulting in year four and beyond being sustained entirely with the communities’ support, providing a financially viable and sustainable model. A multi-year investment is required to build up the capacity of the communities and the health department. Professionalized maintenance services continue to be maintained, but with the economies of scale and model optimization, Cova Circuit Riders or locally employed municipal water technicians provide technical assistance with the costs wholly covered through the chlorine tablet sales, requiring no outside funding to continue.

Cova aggressively seeks new partners, and we have an extensive list of program collaborators (available on our website), which grows regularly. We work directly with the Ministry of Health at both the national and local levels to jointly a) assess needs, b) reach out to partners, c) prioritize effective networks, d) provide technical support, and e) monitor progress. When our team expands into a new region, we work with the Ministry of Health to align with their priority regions. We provide full access to all our technicians’ activities in these communities and water quality results. Our team convenes ‘Mesas de Agua’ or water groups consisting of local government, private, and NGO partners in a municipality to discuss drinking water priorities and resources to maximize impact and ensure everyone is aligned. Our partnership strategically fosters continued program growth and locally driven-sustainable development. Cova has found increased success in our projects when led by local partners. These partnerships help both organizations share resources and offer longer-term local support.

We partner with over 2,300 communities to provide education opportunities and build capacity for self-sustaining, easy to maintain, and financially viable water treatment solutions for 1.4 million people, while allowing communities to be active participants in the process.