To commemorate World Water Day on 22 March, SFA, Saniflo UK’s parent company, is supporting the supply of clean drinking water to 250 school children in Vietnam, working in partnership with Planet Water Foundation.
The SFA Group’s donation covers the deployment of an AquaFill water filtration system, a hygiene education programme to be delivered by Planet Water Foundation and 500 ml reusable water bottles whose packaging recalls the key educational messages of the hygiene education programme through drawings of the ten critical steps of hand washing. The project at the Hanoi primary school will start in May with the installation of the AquaFill system and will take 120 days to complete. For more than a decade, the SFA Group has supported World Water Day, World Plumbing Day and World Toilet Day with numerous humanitarian projects to promote access to clean drinking water for all, partnering with Planet Water Foundation since 2021.
The AquaFill 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, 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 unsafe to drink, forcing schoolchildren to drink unsafe water or spend considerable sums on bottled water. The hygiene education programme will also benefit the parents and relatives of the 250 children, who will be encouraged to share their new knowledge on healthy hygiene.
Saniflo UK managing director, Tim Pestell, says: “We’re delighted to contribute once again to a very worthwhile project. We don’t know how fortunate we are in the UK to have constant access to plentiful, clean drinking water. We hope the school children of Hanoi and their extended families will benefit greatly from the project and thrive with the new AquaFill filtration system and hygiene education programme.”
