Water2Life
Our employee programme
Water2Life: A Journey across continents
With more than €600.000 donated since 2010 and sustainable clean water solutions provided for more than 50.000 people, Water2Life is a powerful employee-initiated and employee-driven program that seeks to bring clean water to communities in need.
In 2013, the program wrapped its first 3-year project providing access to clean water to 16,000 people in Kenya, before making its way to Vietnam to help another 27,000. It is now on its third continent – the Americas.
Aside from making a tangible difference for low-income communities across the globe, the program helps strengthen our sustainable mindset and engage our employees in living the Grundfos values: Being sustainable, focused on people, and creating partnerships.
Global climate changes and imbalances are putting a continuously stronger strain on the world’s water situation. Floods, drought and pollution are some of the challenges that poor people in particular are facing on a daily basis. Our employees want to take responsibility and help alleviate some of these water challenges in order to give these people access to one of the fundamentals of life: clean water.
Helping schools, hospitals and communities with safe water
From 2017 to 2020 Water2Life will be active in Honduras. The focus in Honduras will be public institutions and communities that are in dire need of safe clean water.
Our latest Water2Life project in Honduras is the public school Froylan Turcios. With more than 2,000 students and staff the school is an important institution in the local community. For many years though, it has not been able to secure clean water to the premises which have had consequences to the students health, the hygiene in the school, the canteens and the overall economy of the school.
Our project aimed at ensuring an independent solar powered water supply from own source. Clean water in the school has meant that parents of the students don't need to worry about their children getting sick from the water, it has meant a hygiene and quality boost to the canteens, and the school is now able to sell clean water to the local community as well for a nominal fee, benefitting the community and ensuring that the school can pay for maintenance and repairs when needed.
Water2Life in Honduras
Our latest project in Honduras, was at the Froylan Turcios school in Tocoa, Colon. Through our donations we provided the school with access to clean water with the help of our NGO partner Water Mission.
San Isidro Hospital
First project in Honduras was San Isidro Hospital in Tocoa. According to the regulation, the hospital can accomodate 4,526 patients per year. In reality, it has more than 9,000 patients per year.
The hospital needs access to clean water for its operations, as well as drinking and washing. However, as a community hospital, it lacks a sufficient budget for repairs, maintenance and development. Furthermore, it has an insufficient budget to acquire an improved source of clean water.
Our project aims to make sure that the hospital will have its own water source,filtration and chlorination treatments to deliver safe water. Plumbing, sinks,showers and toilets will also be renovated. The pumps will also be powered by solar panels, ensuring stability and sustainability.
Our NGO partner in Honduras: Water Mission
As in the previous projects, Water2Life is working together with a NGO with a local presence and knowledge. Working together with Water Mission was the obvious choice due to several reasons: The NGO has globally helped more than 3000 communities in the last 20 years with similar challenges, and has for the last 10 years had a close relationship with Grundfos. Engineers, project managers and community workers placed in the same city as the San Isidro Hospital ensures the optimal conditions for helping the public institutions, and solving any ad-hoc challenges fast and effectively that would occur.