LIFEWATER INC

Lifewater’s mission is to provide access to safe water and improved sanitation and hygiene, one village at a time. Our vision is: safe water for every child, a healthy home for every family, and the love of Christ for all. By seeking out the most vulnerable, we hope to serve as the hands and feet of Jesus for communities living in extreme poverty. Lifewater currently has seven active programs in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Cambodia.

Lifewater implements multi-year programs that are designed to reach every household in a specified region with a sustainable source of safe water, improved sanitation and hygiene, and the hope of Jesus. Lifewater’s program strategy is called Vision of a Healthy Village (VHV). Each program is adjusted for specific cultural and geographical contexts, but all programs have the same goal: to reduce water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) related diseases and improve the health and wellbeing of children and families. To achieve this goal, we focus on WASH behavior change as well as construction of WASH infrastructure (water sources, ventilated improved pit latrines, and hand washing stations). Our comprehensive program strategy is rooted in evidence and best practices in WASH and community development. To learn more about our strategy, visit https://lifewater.org/our-process/.

History. Since 1977, Lifewater has served more than 2.5 million people across 45 countries with WASH training and facilities. In that time, we've seen lives transformed in some of the most remote regions of the world.

Results. Since launching the VHV program strategy in 2016, Lifewater has completed 1,009 water points, registered 44,338 Healthy Homes, and seen 524 communities become Healthy Villages (2016 - 2022). A recent study in Ethiopia showed that the percent of households with at least one child under 5 with diarrhea in the week prior to the survey decreased from 21% at baseline to 1.7% at endline.

Local staff. Lifewater works through regional field offices in program areas with 100% local staff who are experienced and trained in community development, WASH programs, and project management. Our local staff are our strength; their cultural insight, local language fluency, and genuine love and care for the communities we work alongside consistently delivers strong programmatic results. Staff work with community mobilizers to reach every household in our regions of operation.

Comprehensive strategy. House by house, Lifewater staff teach life-saving health practices like washing hands with soap and using a latrine with a door for privacy. These not only improve health, but empower families to make changes for themselves even before construction on the community's safe water source begins.

Monitoring & Evaluation. Lifewater is committed to monitoring activities and evaluating long-term change in communities. Lifewater staff collect and submit monitoring data in real-time using a cloud-based data collection tool. At regular program status meetings, staff examine the monitoring data, troubleshoot problems, and make informed decisions to keep the project on track toward its targets. Lifewater also conducts full project evaluations, using baseline, endline, and post-project evaluation studies. These studies allow Lifewater to determine the changes in WASH, health status, and other indicators between the start and end of the project. These studies are imperative as they allow us to review high-level outcomes and long-term impact not captured by day-to-day implementation data. Post-project evaluations are conducted two years after the endline and help us to understand how the outcomes from the project have been sustained over time. To do this well, Lifewater maintains evaluation indicators in order to consistently measure projects, in line with global and national WASH indicators.

Since launching the VHV program strategy in 2016, Lifewater has completed1,009 water points, registered 44,338 Healthy Homes, and seen 524 communities become Healthy Villages (2016 - 2022). Over the next three years (2023 - 2025), we expect to complete an additional 550 water points, register an additional 20,000 Healthy Homes, and register 300 more Healthy Villages.

Strategically, Lifewater plans to continue building a global organization, empowering voices around the world across leadership levels. As well, we expect to accelerate donor growth, both domestically and internationally, and leverage the power of data analytics so that our global teams can spend less time managing data and more time analyzing data.