Our Results

Statistics

Since our founding in 2006:
• Over 125,000 people have improved access to clean water and/or sanitation
• Over 60 projects launched
• Over 1,200 people trained in appropriate and sustainable water and sanitation solutions, nearly 50% are women
• Nine training organizations have begun offering Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) strategies and technologies
• Most projects are self-reliant, income-generating projects

Success Stories

Josefina A. Tandoc is the President of a Local PODS organization. The planning process united two villages to design and implement one water system they would share. Through Josefina’s leadership, the volunteers from the two villages built a gravity-fed spring water system servicing over 350 households. She promotes Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) education and manages the village collective which collects user fees to maintain the system, pay her staff and reinvest in community development. After, the completion of the water system, she led the organization through a negotiation with the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources to reforest their watershed using some of PODS reinvestment savings.

The Aeta is a displaced indigenous group that had been moved fourteen times after the Mt. Pinatubo volcano eruption. Education was inconsistent and access to clean water and sanitation was lacking. During one summer, five people in their community died. After ASDSW conducted a WASH seminar teaching routes of water contamination and tested the water, they realized that it was dirty water that was the cause of death and illness due to their open defecation practices. An ad hoc women’s group was formed and in less than six weeks they built almost 50 toilets.

Sulu Women’s Biosand Filter (BSF) Project emerged from a technology and WASH Education training we conducted for a women’s group in one of the most conflict-ridden Muslim areas in the Philippines. After their success in creating a micro-business selling filters, they were highlighted by Noor-us Salaam, the largest women’s Muslim organization in the Philippines. They are now making plans to replicate what their Sulu sisters have done.