Let me start off by saying – Global Water is an international, non-profit, humanitarian organization founded in 1982. We’re focused on creating safe water supplies, sanitation facilities and hygiene-related facilities for rural villagers in developing countries. We believe the lack of safe drinking water and sanitation facilities are the root causes of hunger, disease and poverty throughout the developing world. Our water projects have an immediate life-changing impact, particularly for women and children, who have the responsibility to gather water for their families every day of their lives in the developing world. Successful Global Water projects utilize water and sanitation as a tool to create sustainable socioeconomic development in these poor rural communities.

Global Water is a volunteer-based organization, so we’re able to send more of your donations directly into our water/sanitation/hygiene facility projects to support rural communities and rural schools. These projects include: surface water supply and distribution systems, rain harvesting supply systems, water-well drilling activities, hand pump installations and repair, water treatment equipment, latrines, school hand-washing stations, community laundry-washing and bathing facilities, watershed reforestation, and health & hygiene education. In addition, Global Water is developing a “Technology-Push” program to bring innovative filtration and disinfection equipment to rural areas of developing countries.

There is no question that Water is absolutely the best way to impact rural villagers in the developing world in a positive way. When I go to a rural area of the developing world, I am seeing people who are living today basically as humans did thousands of year ago. The men of the community are usually a combination of hunter/gatherers and minding small agricultural plots of land where they grow crops that typically have been grown in their area for thousands of years. The women and children of the community gather water and often firewood, and clean clothes and prepare meals. If there is a rural school within walking distance, the children will attend up to about sixth grade, which is typically the highest grade available in rural schools. Girls will often stop going to school before sixth grade if there is no private sanitation facility located at the school because of embarrassment due to lack of privacy. If rural children want to go to school beyond sixth grade, they have to go to a city to live with relatives, but this is seldom done.

As mentioned, there are life-changing health ramifications associated with providing water to a community that affects disease, hunger and poverty. But something you may not know, is that providing a water source for an area of villages also impacts education, business opportunities and personal growth. Let me explain - It takes a lot of time for women and children to access water in many, many regions of the world. On the African Continent, water can be many miles away and it takes time to walk that distance carrying a heavy commodity such as water (weighing 8.3 pounds per gallon). Even in developing countries that have a lot of surface water (such as Central American countries), villagers often must walk down to a stream that may be hundreds of feet below their village (or likewise up to a spring) and, more importantly, must walk back to their village carrying water-filled containers up (or down) steep and dangerous hillsides.

Women and children can only carry 1 – 3 gallons of water (weighing 8 – 25 pounds) under ordinary circumstances so gathering water several times a day is often required. Once a water system is installed in a village, women and children have substantial more time in their lives to allow them the time to pursue things such as an education and to be more productive, for instance by weaving products for sale. So besides impacting disease, hunger and poverty (as if that wasn’t enough), providing a safe water source also opens the possibilities for higher education and business opportunities, especially for women living in the developing world. Again, there is nothing that comes close to making a positive impact for villagers in the developing world as giving them a safe source of water at their village.

An important thing to know about Global Water is, unlike most large non-profit organizations based in the US, we do not generally work with the governments of developing countries to create our projects. We specifically avoid government leaders and officials in order to avoid all the corruption and waste associated with working in the developing world. Instead, we work with small non-profit organizations in the developing countries, themselves (referred to as non-governmental organizations or NGOs). Working directly with NGOs, Global Water provides funding for specific projects (either partial or total), technical support with water treatment technologies and equipment, and co-program management assistance. The NGO provides, construction expertise, day to day supervision, community involvement and co-program management for the project. In addition to working closely with NGOs, Global Water also funds many facility construction projects at rural schools with the help of Peace Corps Volunteers who often identify water/sanitation/hygiene problems at schools they’re working with. Whenever possible, we strive to collaborate with Peace Corps Volunteers since they make wonderful partners to work with and are great at helping to create community involvement and day to day supervision.

If you are interested in finding out what Global Water is all about, you can read our website sections entitled “Who We Are” and “Our Approach”. But perhaps the fastest way to understand us is to read a Magazine Article published in 2008 about us. Our Current Projects page will show you what we’re doing right now while our Planned Projects page will show you some of the projects we’re trying to find funding for today. Lastly, you can find more details about our past projects by reading our latest Progress Report and seeing where we’ve worked through the “Completed Projects” page.

Ever since the beginning of international aid, the rural poor have been neglected by almost everyone in a position to help them, especially their own political leaders. It was startling for us to first realize that many leaders in developing countries do not care enough to help the majority of their own country’s population specifically because they live in rural areas (often making up 70% of the population). Why, you might ask? The simple truth is that many leaders in developing countries are focused on the business of their country that generates wealth and not on the well-being of their own people. And that is the simple truth why people living in most rural areas in the developing world today are still living basically as humans did thousands of years ago in our technology-advanced world of the 21st Century. Ideally, the leaders of the developed world would “push” their developing world counterparts to become more enlightened in terms of human rights and their responsibility to provide basic human needs to their people. But interactions between developed countries and developing world leaders are also focused on doing business, so I’m afraid I do not see that happening anytime soon.

Furthermore, water projects have been notoriously underserved by all measures of international aid. And yet when one creates a set of priorities for helping people in need, safe water is always at the top of the list. Without safe water, all other forms of help, including such important health factors as vaccinations, pale in significance. Health practitioners I’ve met working in the field agree that, generally speaking, children are no better off with vaccinations if they are drinking microbiologically contaminated water every day of their lives. But setting up a temporary clinic to give vaccinations is far easier than supplying a safe water supply for the life of a child.

The bottom line to this letter is the fact that the rural poor living in developing countries desperately need safe water and sanitation facility projects and a voice in the international aid community. Global Water will continue to fund water and sanitation projects specifically to benefit the rural poor and we’ll continue to help give them that voice every chance we get.

Thank you for listening and my
Best Regards,

T.A. Kuepper
Executive Director
Global Water