Peter Goodey, joint Managing Director of Peros, has recently returned from Malawi in south-east Africa where he was one of the first visitors to the country to witness the installation of One Water PlayPumps. He was accompanied on the trip by representatives from Imperial College and the University of Manchester whose purchases of bottles of One Water contributed to the installation of the PlayPumps. Malawi is one of the latest countries to benefit from One Water’s scheme whose earlier activities have concentrated in and around South Africa.
PlayPumps are simple yet incredibly effective devices – a children’s playground roundabout is connected to an underground pump that moves fresh water from a borehole into an overhead storage tank. As the children play, so they help provide their community with a ready supply of fresh water. PlayPumps are funded through the sales of bottled water brand One Water whose profits go towards their installation in communities throughout Africa where there is poor access to fresh water. Peros has been distributing One Water to the food service and university sectors for over four years and has already contributed, through sales to its customers, to nearly 70 pumps.
Peter was overwhelmed by the welcome they were given by the communities they visited and delighted to see the benefits that the pumps had already brought. “The highlight of our trip was when, as we approached one village, more than a thousand children came out from school to meet us,” Peter says. “They were all singing and dancing with joy and gratitude, which was a very humbling and uplifting experience. The very fact that there were so many children in the school is one of the major benefits of the PlayPump, because children no longer have to spend many long and arduous hours collecting water from far-away sources. This means children can attend school and achieve a much-needed education.”
Peter and his colleagues were not only visiting their PlayPumps, but also taking an opportunity to discover what else can be done to provide practical, sustainable help to Malawi, which is among the world’s least developed and most densely populated countries. Much of the economy is reliant on agriculture, and the population is largely rural. Malnutrition can still be a real problem, as can the provision of clean drinking water. Life expectancy at birth is only 43 years due to poor healthcare provision and numerous diseases, including malaria, pneumonia and HIV/Aids.
Peter witnessed first-hand some of these real problems facing Malawians because the country had recently suffered a poor harvest and subsequent lack of food. “During our visit to one project we saw some children who were suffering from malnutrition,” he says. “This really brings the message home to those of us that lead such comfortable lives in the West. And this is why the most successful aid programmes concentrate on providing training, education and starting capital to enable local farmers and communities to build long-term and sustainable futures for themselves.”
“Thankfully, these programmes are beginning to make a difference,” he says. “We saw a number of initiatives that are already helping, including one that Peros is already involved with – the vegetable garden scheme which is supported by sales of One Vitamin Water. The other schemes we saw in operation were Mary’s Meals, Self Help Africa and Opportunity Bank.”
Mary’s Meals is an international movement to set up school feeding projects in communities where poverty and hunger prevent children from gaining an education. Mary’s Meals provides daily meals in school for over 391,000 children in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. “One of the two schools we visited benefited from Mary’s Meals,” Peter says. “Unfortunately, to highlight the problem, there was no food at all at the other school!”
Self Help Africa is a UK-based charity that aims to help enable families to grow enough food to feed themselves and to earn a sustainable living. “We visited projects where bananas were cultivated, ground nuts were being grown, fish farms were created and shallow wells were being dug. Livestock development schemes were also underway to improve the livestock breed and population, and provide sources of meat protein and income for households. Healthcare provision was also evident,” Peter says, “when we visited a local health centre. Support and education is particularly biased towards addressing HIV/Aids issues and home-based care is offered in some cases to the chronically ill and orphans.”
The Opportunity Bank – a business rather than a charity – is the leading provider of micro-finance services in Malawi. With branches and outlets stretching across the country the bank helps in two ways. First it lends money to small self-help schemes that enable individuals or groups to grow food or generate an income to buy food. The emphasis is on sustainable investment and the success rate is very good, with 98% of loans being repaid. Second, the bank provides practical, fingerprint recognition ATMs across Malawi, even in remote villages. This allows money to be saved and accessed more easily, which is then more likely to be used sensibly rather than frittered away.
“We were able to see these schemes for ourselves,” says Peter, “and they are making a real difference. However, with the poverty and lack of food we witnessed, we realise there is still so much more to be done. Visiting Malawi and talking directly to the people struggling to put food in their mouths has made us all determined to redouble our efforts in providing support in whatever ways we can.”
