Where Are the PepsiCo Foundation's Latest WASH Grants Going?
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photo: evgenii mitroshin/shutterstock
The PepsiCo Foundation is once again turning on the taps for WASH, continuing its focus on two key water and sanitation issues—access and sustainability.
The foundation, which is an important supporter of WASH, recently announced a $4.2 million grant to the non-governmental organization WaterAid, a heavy hitter in international non-profit water and sanitation efforts, and a $2 million donation to the China Women's Development Foundation, a nonprofit social welfare organization with WASH projects.
With this latest funding, PepsiCo is tackling one of the world’s biggest challenges. The WHO estimates that 2.1 billion people lack access to safe, readily available water at home. This problem, in turn, drives many others—like the deaths every year of hundreds of thousands of children under five from diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe water and sanitation.
Related: Clean Water for All: How Well Is Philanthropy Tackling One of the World's Biggest Challenges?
WaterAid will use its grant to help relieve the extreme water shortages facing communities in southern India, specifically in Palakkad (Kerala), Nelamangala (Karnakata), and Sri City (Andhra Pradesh), by extending their access to clean water. In China, the funds will support efforts to improve water access in areas where people currently have no WASH infrastructure.
Foundation-wide, Pepsi awards more than $30 million in grants annually. Funding for water-related causes has gone to such partners as partners Safe Water Network, Water.org, WaterAid, China Women's Development Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the 2030 Water Resources Group.
There’s more to this list than meets the eye; it reveals how Pepsi doesn’t depend entirely on WASH organizations to reach its goals. A few years ago, the foundation became the first private donor to the IDB’s AquaFund program, backing its large-scale water resource management modeling tool in Latin America and the Caribbean, to the tune of $5 million.
We’ve reported before on PepsiCo’s consistent WASH focus. It reports investing $40 million in safe water access solutions as part of its goal to support a total of 25 million people with safe water access by 2025. And the foundation believes it’s work so far has paid off, yielding expanded access to safe water for nearly 16 million people in some of the world's most water-stressed areas.
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