Without sustainable and safe water, toilets and hygiene, no one can live a full and healthy life. With all three, they can unlock their potential, break free from poverty, and change their lives for good. Children grow up healthy and strong, women and men get to earn a living, and whole communities start to thrive.

Working with partners and alliances has always been at the heart of everything we do – and together we have changed the lives of tens of millions of people. This can only be achieved through collective action and leveraging the strengths of different actors. We will continue to build these relationships to work together towards our shared goals with the aim of reaching hundreds of millions of people over the coming decade.

Over 771 million people in the world don’t have access to safe water (that’s roughly one in ten of the world’s population). These people risk deadly waterborne disease each time they drink from a dirty borehole, a polluted stream or a dangerous well. Children are most vulnerable – around 290,000 children under five die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That's over 800 children a day, or one child every two minutes.

You can see why we’re passionate about this work. And working on this for over a decade has taught us that empowering people to make change within their own community is the first vital step out of poverty. Together, we will change millions of lives for the better – and change normal for everyone, everywhere within a generation.