A girl washing her face with water with Care sign in background.

Photo: Mohamed Abdelmajid/CARE

Water+ is about more than just handwashing and clean drinking water. Water+ is about linking water to other activities so that we can make the biggest impact possible.

It is about water for agriculture, for means of living, for nutrition, for keeping girls in school, for helping women become leaders, for preventing disease outbreaks, and more. Water+ helps us achieve more with fewer resources and better respond to the complex needs of the communities we serve.

Water+ approaches mean that we work with others whenever possible. We partner with communities, businesses, and governments to ensure that water and sanitation services have effective management with strong leadership, environmental sustainability, and plans for long-term funding and maintenance. We focus on strengthening the links between water, nutrition, health, agriculture, and education.

million

people — 55% women — across 276 programs benefited from CARE’s Water+ programming in 2024.

Highlighted Water+ Programs

She’s SMART: Water Smart Agriculture Program

Working with women farmers in Mali, Malawi, and Ghana, the She’s SMART program helps women grow more food by using Water Smart Agriculture.

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Nutrition and Hygiene

CARE’s Nutrition and Hygiene project in Mali integrated nutrition; water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH); and agriculture in the regions of Mopti, Ségou, and Koulikoro to help women and children improve their health and nutrition.

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School Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene plus Community Impact (SWASH+)

The School Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene plus Community Impact project was an action‐research and advocacy project focusing on increasing the scale, impact, and sustainability of school water, sanitation, and hygiene (SWASH) programming in Kenya.

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Rural Access to New Opportunities in WASH (RANO-WASH)

RANO-WASH works to help communities in rural Madagascar create solutions for sustainable and equal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) systems so people can live healthier lives and preserve the environment.

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Glaciares+

CARE’s Glaciares+ project works with people and communities so they can adapt to climate change, reduce the risks from melting glaciers, and identify opportunities to improve water resources management in the basins of the Santa River in Ancash, the Vilcanota-Urubamba River in Cusco, and the Cañete River in Lima, Peru.

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Strengthening systems

CARE commits to sustainable water services that benefit people for years to come. A key component of this commitment is reinforcing local systems — people, structures, and policies that are fundamental to sustaining those services. CARE works with government, private sector, and other partners at the community, regional, and national levels to strengthen collective capacity for planning, finance, monitoring, and management. We work with people and institutions to think about how they make sure they have the skills and resources to manage, maintain, and pay for a continued supply of safe water and sanitation over time.

Water Smart Agriculture (WaSA)

WaSA focuses on making sure people have water not just to drink, but also to grow food. To do that, we look at how to make the soil healthier so it can hold more water. We also look at rainwater harvesting i.e. collecting and storing rainwater for household and agricultural uses, treating and reclaiming previously-used water, and supporting small-scale irrigation. WaSA’s aim is to improve the capacity of primarily women farmers, increase food production, and become more food- and water-secure by adopting WaSA technologies and practices.

Water conservation and environmental resilience

Threats to water security come from many places, including environmental change, economic insecurity, social inequality, and countless others. That’s why in addition to water, sanitation, and hygiene, we embed our Water+ work within CARE’s programming on food systems and environmental change adaptation. Our focus is to protect the watersheds and water resources that sustain communities, including their food and means of living, in the long term. From setting up rainwater harvesting systems to installing new water monitoring technologies, we use both time-tested and innovative solutions to conserve water in the face of varied and unpredictable threats.

A girl pours water from a bucket attached to a well into water jugs.
Millions of people in Yemen don’t have access to clean water, and many water sources have been destroyed. CARE helps by repairing old water sources and building new ones. These girls pour water from the well in Lahj, Halmeen, into their cans. Photo: Eman Al-Awami/CARE

WASH in emergencies

Our team works closely with the Emergency WASH team delivering disaster affected populations with timely and effective access to water, sanitation, and hygiene. Our programs support women’s dignity and safety in emergencies, help women empower themselves, and help women recover from emergencies stronger and safer. We design emergency response to think not just about immediate needs, but also about how to build longer-term solutions.