The Solidarity and Sustainable Development Fund for Water, known as the "Water Fund": Lyon showing solidarity

This is what you do...

Projects which can be funded by the Water Fund must meet the following main criteria:

• Have the objective of creating infrastructures for access to potable water and / or sanitation. The Water Fund will pay particular attention to projects with a sanitation component;
• Represent a local development factor: access to water as a factor of local development;
• Bolster local project management: public ownership of infrastructures put in place, association of the local authority with all the project stages;
• Be consistent with the national context: synergy with the development programmes run in the region and country, compliance with national regulations;
• Give guarantees of long-term management of works: association of final beneficiaries, training, awareness-raising, putting in place of financial and technical management of the works.

Costs eligible for finance from the Water Fund concern:

• Prior studies and activities, to a maximum of 10% of the application to the Water Fund;
• The implementation of project infrastructures;
• Support actions (awareness-raising of populations, training, etc.) which will ensure the durability of the infrastructure;
• The costs of implementation, to a maximum of 15% of the application to the Water Fund;
• The administrative costs, to a maximum of 5% of the application to the Water Fund.

A maximum subsidy percentage is set based on the total project sum (with the exception of the decentralised cooperation territories of the Métropole de Lyon).

For projects with a total budget which is:

• EUR 80 000 or less,
  • the subsidy from the Water Fund may not be more than 80% of the total budget;
• Between EUR 80 000 and EUR 200 000,
  • the subsidy from the Water Fund may not be more than 50% of the total budget;
• Above EUR 200 000,
  • the subsidy from the Water Fund will be 20% but have a ceiling of EUR 150 000.

The minimum input from the Water Fund for a project is set at EUR 10 000.

• The contribution by the Water Fund to an operation must correspond to a minimum of 20% of the total project budget.
• Joint project funding is preferred.
• Financial and / or value-based investment by the beneficiaries is requested.

The Water Fund cannot commit to financing projects which take longer than 18 months to implement. It is however possible to divide a project into successive phases and the project holder can then apply to the Fund for subsidies for these phases. In that case, the project holder is required to submit a new application for each new phase.

The Water Fund intervenes in 24 eligible countries: Benin, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cambodia, Comoros, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Guinea Conakry, Haiti, Laos, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Chad, Palestinian Territories, Togo, Vietnam.