LightCastle Signs Contract With 1001fontaines to Develop a Strategic Plan For Scaling up Franchising Model for Safe Drinking Water in Bangladesh

LightCastle Partners has recently signed a contract with 1001fontaines: a French non-profit, to conduct a study on assessing the feasibility of implementing a safe drinking water service model in Bangladesh.

Currently, 1001fontaines is supporting 900,000 beneficiaries including 315,000 children daily across Cambodia, Madagascar, Myanmar, and Vietnam with access to safe drinking water. To scale its services to 3 million people by 2025, 1001fontaines aspires to expand its operation in Bangladesh where access to safely managed water services is a predominant challenge.

The Opportunity

Bangladesh faces the risk of high arsenic levels, E. Coli contamination, and salinity intrusion while providing drinking water supply to a vast population across different regions. According to the latest WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme data, only 58.5% of the population in the country has access to drinking water that is free from contamination.

Although the coverage for drinking water has improved over the years, poor water quality has been a major impediment. Hence, Bangladesh is still far from achieving one of the SDG 6 targets—universal and equitable access to safe drinking water.

Realizing the potential of providing clean and affordable drinking water in Bangladesh, 1001fontaines has partnered up with LightCastle to gain an in-depth understanding of existing challenges and solutions related to drinking water services in the local context.

Our Intervention

LightCastle Partners will conduct a study to assess the status quo of drinking water services with a particular focus on rural communities in Bangladesh. Based on stakeholder consultation and field-level findings, LightCastle will develop an operational model and implementation strategy for 1001fontaines to provide safe drinking water access to beneficiaries in underserved regions.

To facilitate 1001fontaines in effectively scaling up the safe drinking water service model across the country, LightCastle will design a partnership strategy to explore collaborative opportunities and create synergies with potential national and local actors.

The Future

1001fontaines envisions serving more than 5 million people in Bangladesh by 2030. To support this vision, LightCastle’s efforts to develop and validate a scalable operational model for 1001fontaines will enable communities in vulnerable regions to access safe drinking water and subsequently, have improved quality of life due to reduced health risks.

In addition, the opportunity to engage and empower local entrepreneurs as well as build meaningful partnerships can potentially result in the co-creation of sustainable solutions for widening safe drinking water services across Bangladesh.