Invitation for proposals in the water sector under USAID’s Development Grants Program, 2010

Source: DGP – RFA – Request for Applications No. M/OAA/GRO/EGAS-DGP-10-001

 Proposals [under this sector at the USAID's Development Grants Program] will be considered in the following areas:

• Water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WSSH)
• Water resources management (WRM)
• Water productivity
• Disaster risk reduction (DRR)

Under Water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WSSH),

Illustrative activity types under the Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene category include:

• Access to improved drinking water supply as defined by the Millennium Development Goals, i.e., the availability of at least 20 liters per person per day from an “improved” source within one kilometer of the user’s dwelling. An “improved” source is one that is likely to provide safe water, including household connections to a water supplydistribution network, public standpipes (connected to networked systems, or from a community well or surface water source), boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs, and rainwater collection. Access to improved sources can be rural or urban, and may be provided through utilities, community-based systems, self-supply, and/or other long-term and permanent systems. Unprotected wells, unprotected springs, rivers or ponds, vendor-provided water, bottled water, tanker truck water (e.g., for emergency purposes) are not considered to be sustainable improved sources. Improvements to existing sources can also be carried out for people for already have first access to an improved source.
• Access to improved sanitation at the household level as defined by the Millennium Development Goals, Sanitation facilities are considered adequate if they are private and if they separate human excreta from human contact, including improved sanitation facilities, connection to a public sewer, connection to a septic system, pour-flush latrines, simple covered pit latrines, and ventilated improved pit latrines. Access provided can be rural or urban, and may be provided through community-managed simplified systems, utility-managed central network systems, or self-supply. Unimproved household level sanitation facilities, including open pit latrines or bucket latrines, are not attributable to the goal, and neither are community latrines with multiple household users, but also can be carried out.
• Access to public or shared improved sanitation facilities in communal or institutional settings (e.g., schools, health clinics, public markets, etc.) if they adequately separate human excreta from human contact and have a sustainable management and maintenance system in place, as well as sufficient hygiene facilities. (NOTE: Public or shared sanitation systems are not considered “improved” under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and are not reported under the MDGs. They are, however, considered eligible activities under this grant program.
• Improvements in the quality of existing drinking water supply or sanitation services, including increasing the number of hours of water access per day or quantity of water available from a networked water system, improving the quality of water delivered by a system, improving the maintenance of systems and reducing the number of days out of service, increasing the number of household connections for people who already had access to another communal improved source, etc.
• Treatment of drinking water quality at the system or community level, prior to distribution to users (including treatment plants, chlorination and filtering at the source or point-of-use (POU), etc).
• Provision of multiple-use water services that include both domestic drinking watersupply and water supply for productive use needs of the community (e.g., small-scale agriculture/gardening, livestock, microenterprise, etc.).
• Hygiene promotion activities to support behavior change in key areas including hand washing, feces management (including sanitation promotion and marketing), and household point-of-use (POU) water treatment.
• Protection of surface water and groundwater quality of potable water supply system from direct contamination prior to distribution to users, including installation of barriers to prevent access to the water point by animals, people, or other contamination sources, or water quality protection activities where there is a direct, and specific cause-effect linkage between the contaminating activity and a drinking water source.
• Enabling environment interventions related to the drinking water supply, sanitation, and hygiene sectors, including policy reform and legal and regulatory strengthening and enforcement.
• Institutional strengthening and reform related to drinking water supply, sanitation and hygiene, including capacity building of government and other key actors and organizational development, water supply and wastewater utility governance/corporatization and utility reform, etc.
• Water infrastructure financing at all scales, including increased access to credit, strengthening of domestic private capital markets, and facilitating support from domestic financial institutions.
• Small-scale community-managed wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure.
• Software aspects of wastewater management at all scales, including community capacity building in technical and financial aspects of system management, large-scale utility corporatization and reform, improved cost recovery, and innovative financing.