PCI Programs that Provide Access to Clean Water and Sanitation

Water Is Life

It’s easy to overlook, a seemingly mundane thing in developed countries, but proper sanitation and access to clean water is one of the most critical issues in the world. At least 2.6 billion people - 41 percent of the global population - do not have access to any sort of basic sanitation system. As a result, millions suffer from dehydration and life-threatening, preventable diseases that claim the lives of thousands each day.

PCI understands that increasing access to cost-effective and sustainable water and sanitation services is essential to helping children and communities prevent disease.  The impact of clean water and proper sanitation is profound; not only does it bring about better health, but it also has positive economic, environmental, and social impacts. By working together with our beneficiaries, PCI provides access to sufficiently clean drinking water for cooking, bathing, washing, and irrigation - water that is desperately needed by communities in remote and impoverished regions across the globe.

In Tanzania, with funding from the Starbucks/Ethos Water Foundation and in partnership with ADRA, the Babati Health through Water and Sanitation (BAHEWASA) Project has been working to provide safe water for 30,000 people using participatory approaches with an eye towards sustainability of project components since 2008. The project is also providing education for better sanitation and hygiene throughout the targeted areas. Rainwater harvest systems are being installed in schools within the area. Low cost latrines are being constructed at primary schools to demonstrate feasibility, and to help generate local demand for such facilities in all primary schools. The project will also lobby for the local government to rehabilitate water supplies to serve an additional 15,000 people and to meet its commitment to ensuring adequate sanitation in all primary schools.

In the year since the devastating earthquake hit Haiti, PCI has installed 139 latrines, 125 bathing facilities and 53 hand-washing stations to improve basic hygiene and sanitation conditions and has reached more than 70,600 people in urban Port au Prince with WASH education, information and guidance on prevention that has been particularly critical given the cholera situation there.