Water for a better life

I appreciate and enjoy learning more about any corporation’s CSR projects just as much as I enjoy sharing them with my readers. These are good tidings that must be shared for others to appreciate and inspire so that they may be emulated. The benefits of good will and good tidings are exponential, so why not share them in this column, as I have done in the past.

For the motoring world, there is a concerted effort among motoring journalists to shine the light on the car companies’ CSR projects by way of a recognition program dubbed ‘Driven to Serve Awards’, so let me do my share with those outside this sphere.

The most recent one that I learned more about, thanks to our very active B&L staff, is the projects of Manila Water Foundation. According to its president

Ding Carpio, it started in 2005 as the CSR arm of Manila Water

Company. However, it wasn’t until 2013 that it evolved into its own as a full-blown foundation. When they started, they merely adopted the CSR projects of their mother company, Manila Water of the Ayalas and became enablers of the company’s WASH program—Water and Access to Sanitation and Hygiene education. Like all of their other programs as well, it is geared toward marginalized communities all across the archipelago.

As time passed, the foundation evolved from the various initiatives of the mother company into these projects:

• Tubig Para Sa Barangay – Inherited from the mother company, the foundation continued to deliver water to under-privileged communities and was so successful that it was used as a case study in some business schools abroad.

• Lingap Program – Lingap provides safe drinking water and sanitation facilities to various schools, communities, even city jails in far flung areas.

• Ahon Pinoy – It’s actually a broader version of Tubig Para Sa Barangay, with a much wider reach. They go to marginalized communities to help them gain access to clean water for daily use. As Ding Carpio said, it is actually like creating a good and clean water source designed to be maintained by the community in a sustainable manner.

• Sanitation Para Sa Barangay – Here, the foundation donates public toilets to barangays that they will operate and maintain sustainably so that when the foundation leaves them, the public toilets will be kept clean and remain operative efficiently.

• Water Para Sa Barangay – Some of the programs may seem redundant but then all of them deal with Water, which is what the mother company and the foundation are all about. In this program, the foundation goes to calamitystricken areas to help the communities look for reliable water sources. The foundation provides a temporary supply of water to help the residents recover from the interruption of water supply. Manila Water Foundation purchased a mobile treatment plant that makes water from streams and rivers, even brackish water potable and safe for drinking. The foundation chose to station this treatment plant in

Boracay which is centrally located so that when needed, it can easily be deployed to Visayas and Mindanao islands.

And because they are into water, they also educate school children about the proper way of washing one’s hands. October is Global Hand Washing Day and every year around this time, the foundation goes to several schools and communities to teach them the proper sevenstep process of effective hand washing. It is amazing how learning and practicing the right way of hand washing can avoid many illnesses among school children.

To complement their various water programs that advocate sanitation and proper hygiene, the foundation does a lot of community and livelihood assistance. They give out small loans of not larger than P100,000 to cooperatives to provide assistance. Of course, the foundation prefers that the loans are related to water, sanitation or the environment as it is seriously focused on these issues.

Manila Water Company employs a lot of engineers for their water distribution and the treatment, production and sanitation aspects of their business. They collaborate with universities to get the best engineering students upon graduation and this was when they realized that there is an utter lack of programs to recognize our best engineers. They thus developed the

Engineering Excellence Award two years ago and on their first run, they had no less than five winners. Each one of the winners went home with P500,000 on top of their recognition as among the best in the country. On the second year, there was only one winner.

They partner with various organizations and offices as well. According to the foundation president, they had a good partnership with the office of Vice President Leni

Robredo through her program Angat Buhay, – which provided the logistical support in transporting heavy equipment and supplies to calamity-stricken areas. Similarly, they partner with the military for the use of their C-130s, also for transporting heavy equipment and supplies to islands devastated by super typhoons.

Clark Development Corporation has been giving financial support as well as logistical support to transport supplies to calamity areas while the Department

of Science & Technology is happy to support their Engineering Excellence Award program, enjoining their engineers to join the program. Corollary to this, they are also partnering with the Philippine Technological

Council to keep them in touch with the various engineering organizations and societies in the country to assist them in the selection process of finalists in the awards program.

In the future, they will develop communities that will operate, maintain and sustain the facilities that the foundation will help them build. They will complement the infrastructure with proper training, even help them create a metering system for their water facilities so that these communities will have the funds to continue their water operations. These communities will also be helped to dispose of their dirty water without damaging the environment.