World Humanitarian Day: Providing Access to Life’s Most Essential Resource

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Oriana Raabe
Oriana Raabe,  serves as Senior Director of Social Responsibility and President of the Pentair Foundation

08/18/2023

World Humanitarian Day: Providing Access to Life’s Most Essential Resource

Woman holding water bucket over her head

In honor of World Humanitarian Day, August 19, we recognize and celebrate the humanitarians around the world who strive to meet ever-growing global needs for the basic necessities of life – including access to clean, safe drinking water.  

At Pentair, we are driven by our purpose to create a better world for people and the planet through smart, sustainable water solutions. We also believe that access to clean, safe water is a fundamental human right and foundational to economic development and gender equity.

These tenets drive the solutions we engineer and exist at the heart of the Pentair Foundation and the Project Safewater programs deployed to provide better access to water in the developing world. Through these efforts, we are proud to collaborate with strategic partners and their teams that work every day to transform the way safe water is sustainably delivered to those who otherwise lack access.


Through Project Safewater, we provide cleaner, safer drinking water every day to 3 million people in the developing world. 

 


Safe Water NetworkSafe Water Network was founded in 2006 with a simple premise: communities can sustainably manage their own supply of safe water. Having launched the first clean water station in India in 2010, Pentair and the Pentair Foundation’s ongoing support of the Safe Water Network has delivered clean water to more than one million people in India via more than 350 iJal Stations — small water treatment facilities that produce clean water sold at affordable rates. By training local communities on how to operate and maintain the iJal stations, we are helping to build sustainable, locally owned, and economically viable solutions.

Water Mission 2017. Shooting the project and families in bo Bella Vista, Honduras

Water MissionWater Mission is a nonprofit that engineers safe water, sanitation, and hygiene solutions in developing countries and disaster areas. Pentair and the Pentair Foundation have collaborated with Water Mission to expand WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) safe water access in the western region of Honduras. Since 2007, our partnership has enabled more than 300,000 people in Honduras to access clean water from more than 200 safe water stations. In 2022, we kicked off our expansion to Mayan communities in Mexico, which will deliver access to safe water in 18 communities, as well as access to sanitation in 11 communities.

shofco-children-washing-hands water-school-blue-horizontal-2880x1920-image-file Photo credit: Louis Nderi


Shining Hope For CommunitiesShining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO) catalyzes large-scale transformation in economically-depressed urban areas in Africa by providing critical services for all, community advocacy platforms, and education and leadership development for women and girls. In collaboration with SHOFCO, Pentair engineers have designed, built, and installed a state-of-the-art water filtration system in Kibera, an impoverished settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, for onsite water treatment. This doubled the volume of clean water that is delivered to the community, which is home to more than 250,000 people. The aerial piping system, the first of its kind in the country, distributes clean water away from groundwater contamination, while reducing the risk of tampering. In 2022, we continued to support efforts in the Mathare settlement in Nairobi and in the coastal town of Mombasa, reaching approximately 17,500 people in those two locations who previously lacked access to clean water.

The Pentair Foundation continues to evolve its work in support of our purpose to create a better world for people and the planet through smart, sustainable water solutions. Read more about our Project Safewater work in our 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report.

About Pentair, the Pentair Foundation and Project Safewater
Pentair and the Pentair Foundation are aligned to create a better world for people and the planet through smart, sustainable water solutions. Project Safewater is a holistic approach to providing safe water solutions together with global and local partners to communities where Pentair operates, and that improves access to water in developing communities around the world. Since 2007, we have launched and co-created innovative approaches — combining technology, microenterprise business models, and scientific research — to help transform the way safer drinking water is sustainably delivered in developing countries. The Pentair Foundation has contributed over $15 million to Project Safewater strategic partners to further advance this endeavor, including $650,000 in 2022.

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