Find pathways to overcome water scarcity around the world is one of the major concerns for the humankind on the next years. In Latin America, several communities lack of access to basic services such as: drinking water and electricity; several coastal communities in countries like Mexico and Colombia are in non-interconnected areas, this is disadvantageous since basic services are hard to provide in a centralized system. The latter means that a different approach must be used to supply drinking water and electricity on those communities, local generation from the sources of the regions is a promising alternative on the cases mentioned. This project aims to provide water for several uses in small local communities, by implementing a salinity gradient power (SGP)-based system which reduces energetical cost and, in some cases, environmental impacts of water treatment as well. To accomplish that, two study cases will be covered, the first considers that the local community has high availability of non-usable water (e.g. Seawater), then a coupled SGP/DES system might be used. The other case considers the scenario where communities are in river mouths where the river water has poor quality, on this case, an SGP unit might be used to power a treatment system to make water useful for different activities into communities. The proposal writing is financed by the "EXCEED-Swindon network in Sustainable water management in development countries". The funds are up to 15.000 Euros which cover travels and meetings in Mexico and Colombia; 5.300 Euros will be transferred to UNAL for equipment acquisition, materials and supplies.