Many rural and peri-urban water supply systems are used by families for productive as well as domestic use. However, in Colombia, productive uses of domestic systems are not adequately understood, recognised or planned for. This leads to a loss of livelihood opportunities for households that need to augment their income and food availability.

A workshop was held in Cali on 16 November 2004 involving organisations who were interested in finding better ways to manage and support multiple uses of water supply systems. The 28 participants were from government, NGOs, research institutes, and water supply committees. The activities of each of these organisations are summarised in this report.

The participants agreed in the workshop to jointly form a learning alliance to work together on research to improve policy and practice relating to the multiple use of water supply systems. This learning alliance will be supported by Cinara and the international research project on Multiple Use Systems (MUS) involving Bolivia in the Andes and other countries in Africa and Asia.