For most underserved communities in Pakistan, it is enough that they have access to water. Any water at all.
For these communities, the quality of water they're feeding to their households is a challenge too secondary to tackle; this water could be high on contaminants or carry a mix of sewerage water but still be consumed by many as it is the only answer to the water stress their ancestors and neighbourhoods have continued to face.
As long as the water they consume appears clear, they use it and feel grateful for not being asked to pay out of the little wages they make.
Such is the mindset of communities that have little to ask of life.
Such is the condition of communities that choose to face life struggles one day at a time, ignoring what may become some of the most hazardous decisions they take towards the health of their own parents, spouses and children.
Within these communities, we have heroes who do everything in their might to stand up and take charge to change the living conditions of their people.
Meet Dr Humera Saleem - the woman who tackled her community's undying water stress
"Log yakeen nahi karte thay" [People would not believe]
"Samajhte thay hum bhi auron ki tarha sirf baaten karte hain" [They would think we were also making fake promises like others]
A trained homeopathic expert running a small-scale NGO of her own in Humak, a small town on the outskirts of Islamabad, Dr. Humera became what the people of her community considered a beacon of hope.
Along with many other women from district Sharki, Dr. Humera knew the community needed someone to step forward and dispel gender-based prejudice for good so the community could truly be empowered to take on developmental tasks.
What the community did not see coming was one woman's unwavering resilience and relentless contribution towards the improvement of her neighbourhood's health and living standards.
The story of pathbreaking strength of an unlikely hero
Dr. Humera wasn't just a woman stepping out of her house out of choice or privilege.
For the people of Humak, several government officials, NGOs and community mobilisers had gathered a few times in the past to carve out an escape from disease and water stress. However, despite several attempts at resolving the issues, no strategy had been successful enough in creating a smart model that would survive on its own.
It was Dr. Humera who emerged as a leader in these times because she knew nothing would change if the community at large did not become the change it so desperately needed. She knew the only way forward would be through unity among the community, and so she stepped in as president of a water committee set up to manage operations of a newly installed water filtration plant by PepsiCo Pakistan and Water Aid; two organisations known to have relentlessly extended support through socially conscious, self-sustaining models across the country for years.
Taking up this role meant that Dr. Humera had to juggle several roles to be able to meet everyone's needs and reach the milestones she had set in mind for her community.
Leaving behind her children at home, including a son born deaf and mute, Dr. Humera went on to lead her committee with help from several other local women to power up a brand new and technically robust water filtering system installed in their area.
The women hoped their efforts would get all children of the community to lead safe and healthy lives, keeping deadly diseases at bay.
Why women are leading the charge on safe water availability
In this community, a large majority of men is employed, and so it falls upon the women to fend for the house, ensuring all operations run without a glitch.
Without safe water to use and consume, there is little they can achieve. Hence, the need for a sustainable system that provides safe and clean water to their households, neighbourhoods, work places and the whole of their community's everyday needs.
Understanding the local dynamics and this routine, Dr. Humera knew she had to empower the women of the community to step out and help her build a plan where all women could run the water facility, expand the community's access to such a safe resource and take home enough water to run everyday operations smoothly.
While talking about the inception of the project, Dr Humera candidly shared how she mobilised women of her locality to achieve this seemingly impossible task.
“Hum nay sab khawateen ko ek platform pe ikhata kiya" [We organised all women members on one platform], she proudly states. What became all the more critical was the task of getting all women together under one platform, spreading awareness about use and importance of filtered water and sharing the knowledge of how contaminated water impacts health.
Dr. Humera says, "Humne bataya ke saaf paani se beemaariyan dur rehti hain aur ye saaf paani plant se kese laana hai". [We explained to the community how we can keep disease at bay with use of safe and clean water and showed them how to transport water from the plant.]
For small and often overlooked communities propped on the outskirts of major cities, it is essential to have a robust, self-sustaining system that can provide them with opportunities to earn decent livelihoods.
Dr. Humera's efforts did not just highlight her hard work and resilience at work but also showed the community the power of teamwork and unwavering unity.
Along with her team of brave women, Dr. Humera involved her 26 year old deaf and mute son, Sufyan Saleem, to get help towards facilitating the operations of the water committee.
Had life not carved a different plan, Sufyan would've become an artist as he loves to paint.
Because of his disability and the mother's determination towards empowering women in the area, Sufyan was mostly let down by people around him on whatever jobs he worked.
The new water committee project that Dr. Humera spearheaded was a ray of hope for Sufyan.
Soon after the initial stages were complete, Sufyan found himself moved and motivated to join the initiative that raised the spirits of his mother and many others, while also giving them the satisfaction of having done a good deed for their community at large.
The plant in Sharki, that Dr. Humera and Sufyan so earnestly monitor, quenches thirst for 2000 people per day with a capacity of cleaning up to 2000 liters of water per hour.
How water stress and contamination indiscriminately impacts Pakistan's health on the daily
Pakistan is one of the most water-stressed countries on earth. For many, safe drinking water still remains a distant dream.
According to a report published by UNICEF, two-thirds of households in Pakistan drink bacterially contaminated water and approximately 53,000 children under the age of five die of diarrhea and other water-borne illnesses every year, leaving aside alarming growth stunting rates in toddlers.
This incredibly high number of contaminated drinking water sources highlights the urgent need for testing and verifying of all drinking water sources, followed by effective mitigation measures.
The situation is dire, but there are people who are committed to tackling it. If their work and spirit is anything to go by, their resolve to find a solution is equal to the task.
Unstoppable agents of change: Meet the young students and skilled teachers of Islamabad Model College for Girls
Tackling the water crisis in several parts of the country directed PepsiCo Pakistan and WaterAid to the seemingly unbridled situation of clean water scarcity in Humak and Sihala.
The administration of Islamabad Model College for Girls reported to the organisations that the children attending school were at high risk of getting dehydrated during the summers as the bottles they would bring from home would finish way before school would end.
The principal had to encourage staff to ask parents to let children purchase water from school.
14 year old Arzish Tahir attends the ninth grade in Islamabad Model College for Girls had a story to report.
She says her friends had often fallen sick due to consumption of contaminated water. Only naturally, parents of most school-going children had been worried about their kids' health. They did not know how to send enough water to school to keep their kids from reaching out to unsafe water sources.
As mentioned by residents, many in the suburban areas of Islamabad were faced with water-borne illnesses and diarrhoea; school-going children remained one of the most vulnerable segments of the area.
Noting this, PepsiCo Pakistan and WaterAid collaborated to install what became the community's first ever faithful filtration plant which has now been serving safe water to more than 700 students while also accommodating 50 students from a nearby public school; an estimated 20,000 residents were also empowered to access clean drinking water at all times.
Another one of the multiple filtration plants is installed in Sihala, which has an operational capacity of 2,000 litres per hour, is able to provide clean water to approximately 1,000 households.
With the help of PepsiCo Pakistan and WaterAid, these easy-to-manage and self-sustaining water filtration plants were installed in these areas and the community - in particular, students, their parents, teachers and neighbourhoods - was informed about the benefits of clean drinking water and the hygiene practices it has enabled.
The question that was answered next was one of sustaining these systems through use of capable tech-based systems.
The model introduced innovative technology of remote telemonitoring through Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system in Islamabad which ensured that the functionality of the systems and quality of the water can be determined remotely without involving physical tests; operational adjustments were also made possible through the control relays with the click of a button.
Water user committees through O&M began to manage the operation and maintenance of each scheme. Their capacity to operate and maintain the schemes was developed to successfully run the schemes.
Meet the teacher whose gender does not define her role at school
Farhat Aziz, a social science teacher at the Islamabad Model College for Girls, has been employed here for the past 16 years.
Farhat understands the needs of her students well enough to know what bars them and their siblings from attending and enrolling into school in the area.
When PepsiCo Pakistan and WaterAid first introduced their water filteration plant model to the administration of the school, the principal pinned all her faith onto Ms. Farhat and Ms. Noureen, a colleague and skilled teacher at school, for training of the plant's management system since the school had no male employees who could take up the task.
In Ms. Farhat's words, "Main aur Madam Noureen training ke liye select huay kyu ke koi mard nahi tha. Hum apni salahiyat ke mutabiq jitna seekh sakay, humne seekha aur plant ko chalaya." [Madam Noureen and I were selected for training (of the plant's management system) as the school had no men available. We learned as much as we could and handled the operations of the plant.]
"Ab ye facility humen roz saaf aur taaza paani faraham karti hai jis se students aur teachers dono faida uthatay hain." [Now this facility provides us and the students with clean and fresh water on the daily.]
All the water that this community would get in the past came from unknown sources.
As explained by the principal of the school, people would reduce the magnitude of such a challenge by saying everyone should either stop requiring additional water completely or drastically reduce usage.
"Ye mumkin nahin" [This is not a possibility], acknowledges the principal.
Many a times, the school would see low attendance as the kids would get dehydrated at school and fall sick.
With about 650 students attending this school alone and about 60 coming from nearby areas to make use of the premises, reducing water consumption is no clever idea to endorse.
The people of Humak needed a robust solution that did not require them to allocate monthly funds or additional charges to access clean and safe water.
For those inhabiting the very capable, upscale and relatively developed urban centres of Pakistan, such thirst remains fairly alien.
Enabling hope and dreams in Karachi's Pak Colony
For the privileged segment of society in Karachi, a diverse set of opportunities and meaningful hustle are reasons the city doesn't sleep.
For the underprivileged, a set of challenges as diverse as opportunities for the rich makes for the reason the city doesn't let them sleep.
For those who have lived in this busy metropolis, areas like Pak Colony are ethnically diverse and thickly populated. Most of the residents here are those who struggle on the daily to meet basic requirements of their households.
The city that is said to be one of Pakistan's busiest, brimming with opportunities for many sends unique challenges to their doorstep every morning; one of these is the challenge of water scarcity and quality and their inability to make daily purchases of the same.
Under a joint collaboration with WaterAid, PepsiCo Pakistan has installed a clean water-supply source, in particular a self-sustaining, community driven water cleaning facility, to ensure there remain multiple points for inhabitants to fetch water from at any time of the day, and to ensure they do not have to travel to faraway places with no guarantee of returning with water that is sufficient and safe for their household to consume.
The water facility can filter 50,000 liters of water every day and provides safe drinking water to 100,000 residents in the area, including three educational institutions; including a nearby government-run school, Yasin Zuberi Secondary school for boys and girls.
Reading up on such initiatives from faraway and heavily privileged areas of the world does little to acquaint us with the real harrowing picture that the young, the old and the female go through on a daily basis, just for water alone.
This school, amongst many others, would cater to their need of clean drinking water by teaming up with teachers who'd willingly contribute from the little salaries they make to buy water for use at the school.
The young would bring their own water from home and take infrequent sips to ensure they have sufficient water left in their bottles to survive the infamous Karachi heat and the weight of their acutely distressing poverty.
As part of its urban extension, PepsiCo Pakistan aims to extend the project in Karachi to one more location since the water challenge the city faces is enormous.
It also plans to reach an estimated 40,000 beneficiaries by expanding the program to two more provinces, KPK & Baluchistan, by installing three filtration plants in Quetta and three filtration plants in Peshawar, respectively.
What it takes to upend age-old stereotypes and truly uplift a community
When PepsiCo and WaterAid came together to support dispirited local communities by unseating the water quality crisis, the organisations knew the initiative will be able to truly uplift the living standards of these communities by establishing various efforts to stave off conventional norms and mindsets in a way that ensured safety of the community's sentiments and supported their aspirations for a better life.
They had to create an infallible plan to engage the community and help them understand why a stakeholder approach was essential in sustaining the system.
They had to skillfully introduce community friendly models that cleared doubts and created a bond of trust that made previously unfamiliar tech and research based systems acceptable to all.
The companies had to reach out and combine efforts towards enabling access to clean water to the underserved communities across the major cities of Pakistan, including Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad.
The underlying aim of their four-year partnership is to provide communities, healthcare facilities, school and remote urban centers with sustainable access to safe and clean water. The program is centered on community sensitisation on hygiene, water safety and water conservation that not only empower underserved communities but also maximise government capacity to manage water resources and educate community members.
With the current drive running successfully across Pakistan, the companies have ensured all government officials and local bodies understand why such an initiative was the only solution to a traditionally-weak system.
To get started, Pepsico and WaterAid joined forces with local partners that knew the pulse of their communities, as well as the needs of partners from the community and related departments to ensure representation as well as active participation from all around.
For all management roles, the community was made responsible for the operational tasks of the water supply schemes and made aware of the fact that it was their solemn responsibility to maintain the system that is now running in such a robust manner.
For all land, electrical support and water required for these systems, a partnership with relevant government departments was essential and it came through due to resilience of the PepsiCo and WaterAid's team members who were all actively involved in this effort. All physical and technical infrastructure for these schemes was put in place with the support of PepsiCo Foundation.
Being the company’s philanthropic arm, PepsiCo Foundation since 2006 has helped more than 55 million people gain access to safe water through distribution, purification, and conservation programs, far surpassing the company’s original target to help 25 million people by 2025.
PepsiCo Pakistan has set an ambitious new target to expand safe water access to 100 million people by 2030 with an immediate-term focus on supporting water distribution, sanitation, and hygiene practices.
PepsiCo has been helping 55 million people gain water access globally. Here's why
Since 2006, PepsiCo has powered initiatives that have resulted in getting more than 55 million people gain access to safe water globally through distribution, purification, and conservation programs, greatly surpassing the company’s original target to help 25 million people by 2025.
The company has now set an ambitious new target as part of its sustainability agenda pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) to expand safe water access to 100 million people by 2030, with a focus on supporting water distribution, sanitation, and community sensitisation of hygiene practices; PepsiCo Positive has been fundamentally transforming vision and operations to create sustainable growth and shared value with human capital at the center.
And this same commitment extends to Pakistan.
The schemes are self-sustaining for more than a year in case of Islamabad and more than six months in case of Karachi.
At the same time, the ‘Access to Safe Water’ program’s rural extension will enable clean water access for more than 24,000 rural people across the potato growing belt, including potato growers, field workers, and the surrounding school communities. The program will extend support to several other cities in the future as part of its organisational ambitions.
In addition to this, clean toilets and hand-washing facilities have been introduced in schools and relevant training for promoting WASH behaviours to enhance overall community resilience are being provided; the program has engaged and impacted rural communities especially young children through announcement of an extension of the model among local partners, government officials, and community members at the Government Girls Elementary School Mirzapur in the Depalpur Tehsil of District Okara.
What the future holds
Creating impact and sustaining it are challenging tasks for those looking to uplift underserved communities across the globe.
Though it is easy to say that the privileged segment of society can get together to serve the case of humanity, it becomes quite a challenge when there's a deep-seated and fairly well-defined disconnect between privilege and poverty.
Organisations like PepsiCo Pakistan have stepped forward to upend stressful living conditions for the underprivileged and to enable sustainability by uplifting partner communities, supporting social change on the ground through changemakers and ensuring expertise meets social challenges to find the right solutions.
The organisation is committed to multiplying the impact in water as part of the pep+ ambitions; a model that draws on the expertise and local knowledge of an array of partners to deliver on its fundamental transformation and water stewardship ambitions, jointly working with non-profit organisations, research institutions, developmental experts as well as collaborative initiatives.
One of the most effective instruments for promoting health safety and reducing water stress is indiscriminate provision of safe and clean water for all.
Amongst other major challenges, Pakistan is part of the developing world that continues the fight against numerous illnesses caused by inadequate and unclean water and sanitation practices.
Coming together, not only can socially conscious corporations and vulnerable communities reduce the gap between access to resources, sustainability and economic disparity but also play their part towards empowering both rural and urban development.
For PepsiCo, this is just the start.
PepsiCo and WaterAid have driven their people-centric program prioritised on uplifting others by improving their access to clean drinking water.
Thousands of people and hundreds of communities are benefitting from the program’s water filtration plants and experiencing transformative changes in their lives which make for building blocks to improving lifestyles across communities.
The impact becomes even more apparent with members of the community acting as owners and partners with the project in their water management.
Such initiatives act as a reminder of how water can transform everything for people by fueling health, prosperity, and collective optimism. Children, women, the elderly and the society on the whole - all benefit from a better, healthier and wholesome life.
This project is produced in paid partnership with PepsiCo Pakistan.
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