Type Nonprofit Organization Website www.waterforpeople.org | Founded 1991 | |
Industry Drinking Water and Sanitation Headquarters Denver, Colorado
United States Key people Eleanor Allen
Chief Executive Officer | ||
Water For People founded in 1991 by the American Water Works Association (AWWA), is a nonprofit international development organization, which helps people in developing countries improve their quality of life by supporting the development of locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities and health and hygiene education programs. Water For People believes that access to safe drinking water and effective sanitation are basic human rights.
Contents
The vision of Water For People is a world where all people have access to safe drinking water and sanitation, a world where no one suffers or dies from a water- or sanitation-related disease. Around the world, 884 million people do not have access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion are without adequate sanitation facilities. Every day, nearly 6,000 people die from water-related illnesses, and the vast majority are children. Other failures include broken pumps and filled latrines.
Water For People promotes lasting programs that examine entire districts and regions rather than households and villages. In this way, not only do people benefit for a long period, but organizations don’t have to expend time and energy going back to the same location. Water For People has established a year-round presence in nine developing countries, including Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, India, Rwanda, Uganda and Malawi.
Volunteer
Water For People depends on volunteers to fulfill much of its mission. Volunteers raise funds and spread the word about the desperate need for safe drinking water and improved sanitation in the developing world. Their main goal is to improve the access to safe and clean water for developing countries around the world. They provide programs that ensure running, sanitized water to prevent water-related illnesses in poorer countries.
The World Water Corps is Water For People’s volunteer program that sends engineers to the countries where the sanitation projects are being established. This allows the volunteers to use their skills and experience in support of the development of sustainable safe drinking water resources, improved sanitation facilities, and hygiene education programs.
World Water Corps volunteers provide professional support to Water For People’s work overseas within the parameters of its successful community-based model. As such, they are not involved with the actual design and construction of water and sanitation systems. These functions are left to local government and nongovernmental organization partners, as well as community members themselves, who must take ownership of these systems and understand how to operate and maintain them for the long term.
Instead, World Water Corps volunteers engage in such activities as mapping to provide baseline data for development, monitoring the functionality of past projects, and evaluating overall program effectiveness. Volunteers have conducted scoping studies and needs assessments to determine where Water For People should expand. They might also be called upon to “train the trainers” abroad or provide technical assistance to partners.
Partnerships
Water For People partners with local governments, the private sector, and other trusted nongovernmental organizations to support their work. They are also partners with Roberts Filter Group, an American water filter production company, and one of the largest suppliers of water-filtration products and services in the United States.