Our Impact
CAWST supports communities around the world
Through the relationships and connections within our community of sector professionals, colleagues, partners, donors, volunteers, funders and supporters.
Tackling the water and sanitation challenge
Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are trapped in a cycle of poverty and disease because they lack access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
The statistics are chilling: over 1.8 billion people are drinking fecally contaminated water, while 2.4 billion people lack access to basic sanitation.
To break that cycle, technology needs to be appropriate, affordable and sustainable at the household level. And local populations need to have the knowledge and skills necessary to understand their needs, identify and implement solutions and then sustain them over the long-term.
CAWST is looking to build more relationships and integrate more deeply with our partners. We’re increasingly confident this strategy will accelerate our impact to reach 100 million people by 2030.
Learn about the three steps that will help bring safe water, sanitation and hygiene to 100 million people by 2030.
The capacity gap in the WASH sector
We work with others at all "levels" with the goal of closing the gap.
CAWST's Focus*
- Develop the capacity of practitioners to take action
- Provide education tools for field workers and end users
- Enable information and expertise exchange across all levels
- Identify barriers and ways to overcome them
Capability Statement
CAWST teaches people how to get safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in their own homes, using simple, affordable technologies.
In Numbers
(2022)
12,500,000
people reached with better water or sanitation
50,900
people reached using CAWST’s education materials
14,746
people trained by CAWST and our partners.
107
countries
Our Role in Canada
Born and based in Calgary, CAWST operates on the Treaty 7 Territory; we honour and appreciate this special place in which we live and work. Our home is the meeting place of the Elbow and the Bow rivers, two powerful sources for life and wellbeing. Treaty 7 is the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy: Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani; the Tsuut'ina; the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations; and the Métis Nation, Region III.
All people living in Canada have a right to clean water and yet for many Indigenous communities this right is not realized. Getting safe water in a community can be complex and the right solution may be different for each community or even each household. This is true in every country that CAWST works. Discovering and assessing which option(s) are the right ones for a community is an important task to get sustainable water service(s).
CAWST specializes in non-networked, sometimes called point-of-use, non-piped or household level, water technologies and implementation approaches. These solutions can be interim or long-term depending on the context.
If you work or live in an Indigenous community looking for safe water solutions, CAWST would be happy to discuss the feasibility of household water treatment based on your context.
We welcome opportunities to share our knowledge and resources and build relationships with others living in Canada who are just as passionate as we are about safe water.
We are embarking on a project to adapt some of our key resources to better fit the Canadian context and we are looking forward to sharing them with you.
Reach out to discuss the safe drinking water crisis in Canada.