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A look at four charities, social-impact investors and innovators making headway in tackling the water crisis.

Right now, one in nine of us living on the planet — more than 700 million people — do not have access to safe water. Yet the sixth United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal is to provide everyone with clean water and sanitation within the next nine years.

The COVID-19 pandemic has served to underline this pressing problem. More than 66 percent of healthcare facilities in low-income countries don’t even have soap or running water. Imagine being a frontline worker and trying to stop the spread of COVID without water.

Millions have poured into water charity, but not all has been well spent. A report from the International Institute for Environment and Development in 2009 cited that US$360 million had been wasted on water projects in rural Africa and 50,000 water-supply points across the continent that were now inaccessible; if not well maintained, wells built by charities can become toxic. Toilets can become a source of disease rather than better hygiene. 

And water is a complex social problem, not just about straightforward sanitation. The issue of water disproportionately affects women and girls, because they are often responsible for water collection in rural communities. Millions of girls drop out of school because they are in charge of water collection, which usually means being relegated to a brutal cycle of poverty, where women spend hours searching for water just to get through to the next day. 

But some charities, social-impact investors and innovators are making smart headway to tackle the water crisis. Here we list a few. 

The venture capital fund: Danone Communities

“Let us conduct our businesses with both the heart and the head,” said Antoine Riboud, former CEO of Danone, during a 1972 speech. This marked the birth of Danone’s dual commitment to business success and social progress. 

The Danone Communities Fund was launched in 2007 to support social entrepreneurs, with a focus on water and nutrition. In the last decade it has dramatically increased its social impact from nearly US$1 million in 2010 to more than US$10 million in 2019, with 12 businesses in 18 countries. 

One such is 1001 Fontaines, a French NGO set up on the basis that “we drink 90 percent of our diseases”, according to microbiologist Louis Pasteur. It works in Myanmar, Cambodia, Madagascar and Vietnam, primarily providing water in schools. Last year it had 850,000 beneficiaries; it is aiming for three million between now and 2025. 

The microfinancer: Water.org

 Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org

Water.org, co-founded in 2009 by Matt Damon and Gary White, has empowered more than 31 million people with access to safe water or sanitation through microfinance. Gary White’s insight was that microfinance had to be part of safe water provision because people were already paying for water. “Often the poorest people in the world were paying 10 to 15 times what the middle class were paying because they weren’t connected to the existing infrastructure.” 

White’s experience has shown that the tool most people needed to access clean water wasn’t a drill rig or a grant but, rather, a small, affordable loan to pay for water. That shift in thinking had started water flowing to poor communities across the world. The pair joined forces in 2009, and Water.org was born, followed shortly afterwards by WaterCredit. 

“Rather than coming up with, say, US$150 at once, they’re able to make small, affordable loan payments over time, giving their families taps and toilets they need immediately,” says Damon. And the repayment rate is incredible. The people we serve are repaying their loans at a 99 percent repayment rate,” he adds in a recent interview. 

The tech start-up: H2GO Global

H2GO Solutions water tanks and filters being taken to villages

The incredible thing is that we don’t even need a vaccine to solve water poverty, says Kuala Lumpur-born Rajiv Bhanot, CEO of HG2O. “All we need is a scalable solution and the funding and local partners to distribute it.”

Now, it seems we have at least one of those things. 

Bhanot always felt compelled to help people and was on track to become a medical doctor. But after completing his studies, a chance meeting at a careers conference led him to establish H2GO Global, a company making filters using British nanotechnology to convert contaminated water into sterile drinking water, immediately, without the use of any electricity, chemicals, or UV-ray treatment. It can provide safe drinking water for less than US$0.01 per litre. 

In the decade since setting up the company he has provided 1.7-million people with safe drinking water. It has installed over 10,000 communal systems in rural schools, villages and army camps that have been paid for by government entities, as well as bringing clean water to disaster relief areas such as the Philippines in 2013, in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan; and, more recently, at the Bangladesh border to provide clean water for the Rohingya refugees. It collaborates with on-the-ground partners that ‘adopt’ villages, schools or projects and gets them to commit to a five-year pledge. Then it is the responsibility of the partner to do monthly and annual maintenance checks on the water filters, says Bhanot. 

H2GO has also partnered with fashion brand LDB Paris (Dr Bhanot met David, the founder’s son, while studying at Harvard), which now donates one litre of purified water to an orphanage in Africa for every garment sold. 

The end goal, says Bhanot, would be to collaborate with a big NGO or attract a major investor or philanthropist to scale up the solution. He reckons it would take around US$6.5 billion annually to provide clean drinking water to all the global communities that need it. “It’s a huge amount of money but the US defence budget for 2020 was US$720 billion. Policy makers have to be pressured to the point of looking for a solution.”

The charity: charity: water

Scott Harrison, founder of charity:water (c) Jeff Lipsky

Founded by former nightclub promoter Scott Harrison in 2006, charity:water is a non-profit that funds sustainable water projects in areas of greatest need and works with local partners to implement them. So far, it has funded over 65,000 water projects for 12.7 million people in 29 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. It has raised more than US$557 million from 1 million donors worldwide. charity: water's operating costs are funded by a dedicated group of private donors, known as The Well. 

They pay for things like staff salaries, trips to the field and more, ensuring that 100% of public donations can go directly to funding clean water projects. With two completely separate bank accounts, audited independently and never touched for other reasons, charity: water is able to guarantee that every public dollar donated is sent directly to the field. The organization even pays back credit card fees, and proves project completion with GPS coordinates and photos sent to every donor.

Charity:water is focussed on the maintenance of water projects and through a partnership with Google, it developed remote sensor technology to monitor the water flow and functionality of water points in the field and report data in real time. This enables it to quickly detect irregularities and dispatch mechanics to make repairs, minimizing the time a community is without clean water. The sensors also allow donors see exactly how much water is being pumped every hour on a given day. They became more important than ever during the global COVID-19 pandemic – with travel restrictions, charity: water wasn't able to easily get to sites in the field, but the sensor technology enabled it to still ensure various water projects were operating properly.

This article appeared in Billionaire's Power Issue, Summer 2021. To subscribe contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.