The Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) project PN28 developed and tested ‘multiple-use water services’ (‘MUS’). This approach to water services takes multiple water needs of rural and periurban communities as the starting point for planning and designing new systems or rehabilitations. By overcoming the administrative boundaries between single-use sectors, MUS contributes more sustainably to more dimensions of well-being than single-use approaches: health, freedom from drudgery, food, and income. The action-research took place in 25 study areas in eight countries in five basins. The project brought global, national, intermediate level, and local partners together who were champions of MUS at the time. At the community level, the project identified generic models for implementing MUS. This was done through pilotimplementation of innovative multiple-use water services, and by analyzing de facto multiple uses of singleuse planned systems. At the intermediate, national, and global level, the project’s ‘learning alliances’ engaged in the wide upscaling of these community-level MUS models, with the aim of establishing an enabling environment to provide every rural and periurban water user with water for multiple uses. This paper presents some of the project findings.