CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION

What’s the goal?

To ensure access to safe water sources and sanitation for all.

Targets include universal and equitable access to clean, affordable drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, reducing pollution, increasing water-use efficiency, and promoting the participatory management of water and sanitation services.

Why?

Water, sanitation and hygiene are a human right – yet millions are still faced with daily challenges in accessing even the most basic of services. Three in 10 people across the world lack access to safely managed drinking water.

Our contribution

In South Africa there are hundreds of schools without a reliable source of clean drinking water. Through Roundabout Water Solutions, AECI is helping to address this challenge in rural communities by funding a sustainable pumping system – the PlayPump. As the name suggests, this pump is powered by the play of children. As they spin on a merry-go-round, water is pumped from underground and a simple tap provides easy access for the children and their mothers. There are now more than 900 PlayPumps across South Africa, with 18 of these having been installed at rural schools as recently as last year. Most of the schools that benefitted had been without a reliable water supply for months.

Joint Aid Management (JAM) is one of the SED programmes’ longest-standing sustainable development partners. This organisation installs rainwater tanks when undertaking early childhood development centre makeovers. This secures a more regular supply of water for hand washing and gardening activities.

“With reliable water the children, especiallythe girls, are not taken out of school to collect water. There is water for the cooks to cook a meal, the children do not become dehydrated, and therefore sent home early, and there is better hygiene at the schools.”

– Sandra Hayes, Programme Director Roundabout Water Solutions