The sustainability of rural water supply schemes is very important of rural communities. In Kelela woredas rural residences do not have access to sustainable water schemes. This study was carried out to assess the sustainability of rural water supply Schemes in study area. To achieve the objective the level of community participation, the main factors of sustainability of the rural water supply schemes, and the working cooperation of the water committee and woreda expert in the Kelela woreda were assessed Semi-structured questionnaires were prepared and distributed to 196 randomly chosen households from eleven rural Kebeles, Beside data was gathered by purposively organized eight focus groups discussion.no need key informants interview and field observation kebele selection was made by stratified sampling technique on two agro ecological zones. Out of 898 existing rural water supply schemes, 57 (25 spring and 32 Hand dug well) schemes were considered for this study. Raw data were collected in qualitative and quantitative methods, conducted using the SPSS software package and Microsoft Excel, According to the water users, problems limiting sustainability of the scheme were not participating in the planning and initiation stages of the project development, not enough representations and encouragement of women and youth in the water committee , no educational sessions given to the community, lack in woreda expert support to the community, no replacement funds and lack in financial capacity of the communities The result showed that the sustainability of rural water supply schemes was affected by demand responsiveness, community factors, cost-sharing and cost-recovery, willingness and ownership, and operation and maintenance. Therefore, special attention should be given to those problems by doing educational sessions for the community, strengthen the integration between woreda and water committee, timely maintained non-functional schemes, regular monitoring and improve community participations in all stages of water project development and construct the project based on demand response approach to sustain the schemes. Keywords: Community participation, kelela woreda, sustainability