Our MissionPure Water for the World (PWW) works in remote and underserved regions of developing countries that lack sustainable clean, safe drinking water. We work with local governments and community partners to select, analyze the appropriate technology for the community, and to implement cost effective projects.
Pure Water began in 1994 when a dentist from the Brattleboro, Vermont Rotary Club volunteered to go to a small Salvadoran village to provide medical services. He was moved by the poor living conditions and vowed to make a difference and do something. With the support of his Rotary Club, he decided to help the people by providing rural villages with potable water. The success and interest of the club’s activities soon outgrew the capacity of the Rotary Club.
As a result, Pure Water for the World, Inc. was set up as a 501c3 organization to carry out this important humanitarian effort in 1999. With the focused commitment of the Board of Directors, staff was hired to move the work forward.
Pure Water worked to identify a system that would best fit the demands of the rural villages and the people that the organization first sought to serve. After much effort and investigation Pure Water focused on individual sand filters that would go into each families home and Pure Water developed an educational component and follow up to insure the success of the installed sand filters. Although the initial efforts were in El Salvador, most of the recent efforts have been in Honduras and Haiti. Pure Water is now expanding into other countries after being recognized as the leading organization dealing with providing clean, safe drinking water to the rural populations. The household sand filters have made a huge difference in the villages, schools and homes where Pure Water has been able to install them. Where filters are in use the crying from stomach pains, death, and poor school attendance are a thing of the past.
Our program emphasizes education as a critical component of any program trying to provide clean, safe drinking water. We also provide hygiene and sanitation education, parasitic treatment and follow-up monitoring. In order to create jobs in-country we build concrete filters at each project site where they are used. In Haiti, Pure Water’s filter factory employees 30 Haitians, many of whom did not have a decent job before. We also have developed a plastic filter that can be transported more easily to the rural population and can be made in country on a portable molding machine. Besides slow sand filters for individuals and community-based sand filters, Pure Water has also done solar pasteurization, and is setting up a rainwater harvesting program. We are expanding the technologies that we bring to each situation so that we can provide cost-effective and appropriate technologies to solve the problems of that community.
