We join the United Nations in their annual March 22 celebration of World Water Day. This year we are particularly excited that the 2015 theme is Water and Sustainable Development! We have always believed that access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene is the foundation for sustainable development – it is included in our very mission: “to provide access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene as a means to enable community-driven development in Sub-Saharan Africa…” As our Founder and President, Knut Brundtland likes to say, “The availability of clean water in a village makes the village grow… it is an engine for growth.”

By developing close relationships with our partners from the beginning, and continuing to follow up with communities after implementation, we saw early the many different ways people reported their lives changed from having access to these vital services – and we realized we weren’t just replacing dirty water with clean water, we were working with communities to give them to tools to change everything!

That inspired our concept of the Ripple Effect, and the infographic we debuted in 2012 and revised, with the image you see below, in 2013. The UN’s official poster, at left, for World Water Day 2015 echoes this theme – and we couldn’t be prouder!

Learn more about Voss Foundation’s Ripple Effect.

Watch “Community-Driven Development,” our 2014 video.