The WaterLinks Network involves the WaterLinks Secretariat, development partners, facilitators, national water associations, and water operators.  Development partners, such as ADB and USAID, provide the funding for water operator partnerships and other capacity building activities. The WaterLinks Secretariat and facilitators, such as the USAID ECO-Asia Program and ADB RETA, facilitate, promote and coordinate water operator partnerships either directly, or through national water associations.  

Follow the links below to learn more about the roles of each type of organization, or learn more about existing partners at our Database of Water Operators.

Development Partners & Facilitators 
Development partners, e.g. donor institutions, international organizations, associations and regional networks, provide funding and technical support for WOPs. Principal partners include the Asian Development Bank, International Water Association and the U.S. Agency for International Development. With funds from development partners, partnership facilitators help establish WOPs, and coordinate and monitor activity implementation, including developing MOUs and work plans, and providing hands-on coordination and logistical support.  Some development partners implement WOPs through their own facilitation programs (such as USAID's ECO-Asia program, or ADB's RETA), while others may fund channel funds through the WaterLinks Secretariat for other facilitation programs to implement partnerships on their behalf.  >> Learn More

WaterLinks Secretariat 
The WaterLinks Secretariat, currently located in the USAID ECO-Asia program, provides a range of services tailored to the various partner needs.  The Secretariat prevents unnecessary duplication of efforts, provides economics of scale and optimizing the comparative advantages of partner organizations.  Based on ongoing operations, the Secretariat provides development partner coordination and support, communications and outreach, partner identification, partnership facilitation services, monitoring and reporting, and fundraising.

Water Operators
In a typical WOP, one expert or "mentor" operator undertakes technical visits and sustained communication with one or more counterpart "recipient" operator(s) aimed at sharing know-how, information and technology. Partnerships often result in the adoption and of new policies and practices by the recipient. Recipient operators often make new investments in equipment or infrastructure. Other partnership arrangements include multiple mentor operators working with one recipient, or vice versa. To enable scale up within a country, recipient operators share newly adopted practices with their peers. >> Learn More

Water Associations 
Water associations are an important group in raising the capacity of water operators in Asia.  Once partnerships under WaterLinks help raise the capacity of recipient utilities, water associations can help disseminate and magnify this knowledge transfer by facilitating in-country WOPs and other training activities. WaterLinks development partners are interested in helping water associations develop the capacity to facilitate domestic WOPs, as well as build associations' capacity to serve their members. >> Learn More