What We Do
1 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean water, 2 million people die each year from drinking contaminated water and 40 billion hours a year are spent walking to collect water (an average of 5 hours per person per day).
Nearly 25 million adults and children have HIV AIDS in Africa, and over 2 million die each year from AIDS related illnesses.
We can’t change these figures overnight, but we can change lives one person, one day at a time.
Water
When we were looking for an NGO to partner with in Africa we wanted to work with a small team with big ambitions – and we found exactly what we were looking for in Playpumps International.
Playpumps not only provide a clean, sustainable water supply, but they ensure no time is wasted walking to collect water.
The great news is that we’re currently supplying a community in Africa with a Playpump every few days.
Sexual Health
HIV AIDS and sexual health projects in Africa are so complicated that when we started to think about who to work with we went to see Barbara Heinzen (the godmother of all HIV AIDS projects), spoke to Unicef, chatted to people flying to the African UN Conference on AIDS – each person we spoke to gave a different answer as to what we should do. We should supply fridges to keep ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs) cold (and obviously generators to power them), taxi’s to get people to hospital, roving medical teams to work in communities, educational material, theatre works shops for community engagement and so on. The answer is all of these, but where to start?
Having been introduced to Dillon Woods (a local hero in the Mbashe region of South Africa) we decided to start by helping The Donald Woods Foundation with their good work in the Eastern Cape. Set up in 2003, The Donald Wood Foundation encourages people to get tested for HIV and runs support programmes for those affected by HIV and AIDS, including those orphaned by the disease.
We then developed the One condom range with the same ‘like for like’ concept as One water. So when consumers drink One water, Africa drinks too and when consumers use One condoms, not only will they be keeping themselves and their partner safe, but Africa too.
Just as all profits from One water go to funding water projects in Africa, all the profits from the sale of One condoms go towards helping raise awareness and help address the problems associated with HIV and AIDS in Africa via our charity partner, the Donald Woods Foundation.
