Peru: Cleaner Water and Improved Lives

From the early 1980s until 2007, WUSC spent more than two decades improving water supplies, sanitation services and health for 1.3 million people living in urban, semi-urban and rural shantytowns and villages in Peru.

Beginning in 1982, we began assisting impoverished communities in and around the capital, Lima, to gain access to basic water and sewer services. This work expanded to include delivering drinking water systems and latrines to rural communities in the Ancash and Ica districts. Eventually WUSC began working with low-income communities and local water utilities in the coastal cities of Trujillo, Ica and Nasca. 

By the year 2000, despite our significant progress in those regions, a quarter of Peruvians still lacked access to potable water, while more than a third lacked adequate sanitation facilities.

That year, WUSC's work in Peru entered its next phase with the launch of a new program - Strengthening Municipal Capacity in Water and Sanitation Services in Selected Cities of Peru. This seven-year project helped local water utilities manage their existing water and sanitation systems more effectively, extend these systems into under-serviced areas, and raise public awareness about water, sanitation and environmental issues through school-based initiatives. 

Our greater goal was to improve overall health and living conditions in urban and rural areas by helping more families gain access to secure, adequate, dependable and affordable drinking water and sanitation services.

The success of our efforts in Peru depended on our ability to work in close cooperation with local partners in more than half a dozen districts, from greater Lima to small and mid-sized cities and towns to rural communities.

Major funding for our work was provided by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Additional support was provided through the Peruvian government as well as regional and local governments and agencies.

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