Oklahoma City Nonprofit, Water4, Receives Two New Grants From the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust and USAID

OKLAHOMA CITY, May 18, 2022 (Newswire.com) - Water4, an international nonprofit headquartered in Oklahoma City, was recently awarded a total of $6.6 million, including a $4.3 million grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust and $2.3 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Enhancing WASH grant, working under Global Communities as the prime grantee. These two new partners will support the optimization and scaling of Water4's replicable, private sector model to deliver safe water services for up to 100,000 people across three districts in Ghana by 2025. 

With the support of these new partnerships, Water4 will now be able to start a new NUMA franchise based in the Upper West region of northern Ghana. This will create more than 160 private sector jobs. The business will operate and maintain more than 700 new water points to ensure sustainable access to safe water for every home, school and clinic under long-term public-private partnership contracts with local government.

These new partnerships will build off of the work that Water4 and its local Ghanaian business partner, 4Ward Development West Africa, accomplished in the Wassa East District of western Ghana in 2020. Wassa East is Water4's proof-of-concept for delivering access to safe water at district scale for the first time. Water4's unique NUMA franchise model, which delivers an aspirational and branded safe water product, includes community walk-up kiosks, home connections, and connections at schools, religious institutions, businesses and healthcare facilities. Using this model, Water4 and 4Ward Development were able to cover 91% of the district with safe water services in just five years. 

Source: Water4