World Humanitarian Day: Making an Impact in the Developing World

Karla Robertson, serves as Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary, and Chief Social Responsibility Officer

08/19/2022

World Humanitarian Day: Making an Impact in the Developing World

This year, World Humanitarian Day is focused on uniting people around the world to work toward meaningful climate action in recognition of the impact on the world's most vulnerable people including those in the developing world that are impacted by drought, floods and other natural disasters.

At Pentair, we are grounded in our purpose to make lives better by inspiring people to move, improve, and enjoy life's essential resources. This is critical given our changing climate and as access to essential resources, such as water, become further strained. In addition to developing products that use fewer resources and help our customers address key sustainability challenges, we are aiming to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and water withdrawal within our operations.

We also believe that safe water is a fundamental human right and foundational to economic development and gender equality. These tenets drive the solutions we engineer and exist at the heart of our Project Safewater programs.

Project Safewater is our holistic approach to providing safe water solutions together with global and local partners in 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.

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

Safe Water Network 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 1 million people in India via more than 260 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 MissionPentair and the Pentair Foundation continue to collaborate with our longtime partner Water Mission to expand 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, reducing the incidence of waterborne illness by 80%. In 2021, we announced additional funding to expand the program to Mayan communities in Mexico.

Shining Hope For CommunitiesPentair engineers have designed, built, and installed a state-of the-art water filtration system in Kibera, an impoverished settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, to treat water onsite. This doubled the volume of water that the system delivers to the community, which is home to an estimated 250,000 people. The aerial piping system, the first of its kind in the country, distributes the clean water away from groundwater contamination while reducing the risk of tampering. In 2021, we continued to support efforts in the Mathare settlement in Nairobi and the coastal town of Mombasa, reaching approximately 17,500 people who previously lacked access to clean water.

Read more about our Project Safewater efforts in our Corporate Responsibility Report

Related Content

Project Safewater

Our Impact

Pentair Philanthropy