World Water Day 2023: SFA Group reconfirms its support for access to clean water for all with Planet Water Foundation

World Water Day 2023: SFA Group reconfirms its support for access to clean water for all with Planet Water Foundation

Since 2011, on the occasion of World Water Day (22 March), World Plumbing Day and World Toilet Day, the SFA Group has been regularly involved in a number of humanitarian projects to promote access to drinking water for all. As it has done since 2021, the SFA Group is celebrating World Water Day 2023 by confirming its commitment to the non-profit organisation Planet Water Foundation.

This year, the SFA Group made a donation to purchase a water filtration/purification system (AquaFill) for a primary school in Hanoi (Vietnam), which serves around 250 schoolchildren. The system works by gravity - so no external supply is needed - and with three-stage water filtration using hollow fibre ultra-filtration and activated carbon technology. The process ensures the removal of pathogens, including fungi bacteria, parasitic worms, viruses and other protozoa. The process filters 1,000 litres of water per hour from a municipal non-potable water supply, which is equivalent to the daily drinking water needs of 1,800 people. Unfortunately, many schools in urban and peri-urban centres in Southeast Asia have a municipal water supply that is not safe to drink, forcing schoolchildren to drink unsafe water or spend considerable sums on bottled water.

The SFA Group's 2023 donation also includes the implementation of a hygiene education programme, provided by the Planet Water Foundation, for these 250 schoolchildren and, as a positive effect, for their parents and relatives, as the children share their new knowledge on healthy hygiene. Finally, the SFA Group's donation is accompanied by the provision of 500 ml reusable water bottles whose packaging recalls the key educational messages of the hygiene education programme, through drawings of the 10 key steps of hand washing.

World Water Day

Since 1993, at the initiative of the UN, World Water Day has been celebrating this essential resource annually on 22 March by making as many people as possible aware of the health issues involved in managing it.  Let us remember that today more than 2 billion people in the world still do not have access to drinking water and sanitation and that 4.5 billion people are deprived of safely managed sanitation facilities (UN report of 2015). This is a real global problem when we know that water needs will increase by 50% by 2030 (Source UN, 2017 figures). This is why World Water Day intends to draw more and more attention to the actions to be taken to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) adopted in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly: "Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all".