Clean Water program awarded $3 million to expand water program through the Global Partnership for Output Based Aid, administered by the World Bank.

Posted: September 26, 2007

The Global Partnership for Output-Based Aid (GPOBA) has committed $3 million the East Meets West Foundation to greatly expand the Clean Water program over the next three years. The GPOBA is run by the World Bank. The money will allow for the development of about 75 water systems and additional US$300,000 for GPOBA monitoring and supervision.

The objective of the project is to provide access to clean water services through the construction of about 75 new water systems in low income rural communities in five provinces located in the central part of Vietnam. Each community has around 500 households and the uptake for the proposed scheme is expected to be around 75% or 400 households. The total beneficiaries are therefore around 30,000 households.

In their commitment letter, the GPOBA wrote "EMWF, the grant recipient and project implementation entity, is a well recognized US-based international non-governmental organization (INGO), operating in Vietnam for the last 20 years. EMWF has been working with local government authorities and beneficiaries to develop a community-based approach to provide clean water to rural HHs for more than ten years. EMWF has built about 90 small piped water systems providing service to about 150,000 rural people (about 30,000 HHs ) in central Vietnam. EMWF has developed a track record in delivering sustainable services at low cost, and with high customer ownership and satisfaction.

The proposed Output Based Aid project will be the first project for EMWF where a financing mechanism based on output delivery is introduced to enhance its performance.  EMWF will pre-finance the construction of about 75 water systems for the next 3 years with a phased approach (Year 1: 20 systems; year 2: 25 systems; year 3: 30 systems).  The GPOBA subsidy of US$3,000,000 (with a possible up scaling of up to US$5,000,000 to be considered at the project’s mid term review anticipated to be in May 2009) will be disbursed directly to EMWF quarterly after connection to water services have been realized and independently verified (80% of subsidy amount or US$80) and after evidence of satisfactory service delivery for at least six months (remaining 20% or US$20)."

The GPOBA award will double the capacity of the Clean Water program over the next three years.

 

Download a copy of the Environmental Assessment Framework for GPOBA-Financed Rural Water Supply Systems in Central Vietnam (1.3 mb .doc file)

 

To find out more about the GPOBA program, please contact our Chief Strategy Officer Minh Chau Nguyen or call 1-800-561-3378.