Diageo releases evaluation report of the 2007 Water of Life projects in Africa
Of the one billion people in the world estimated to have restricted access to safe drinking water, 400 million live in Africa. The importance of water to sustainable development is irrefutable: clean water contributes to improved health and education levels and reduces poverty.
Diageo’s Water of Life programme supports community-based projects that improve access to drinking water. Last year in Africa, Diageo accelerated the programme by launching its 1 Million Challenge – a commitment to provide drinking water to one million people in Africa every year until 2015, in line with the UN Millennium Development Goals.
To understand fully the impact of the Water of Life projects, Diageo commissioned an evaluation to assess the number of individuals being reached and the wider social benefits achieved through water security.
Click here to download an interactive copy of the evaluation of the 2007 Water of Life projects in Africa report
This is our first report of all our community water projects in Africa. Email nicole.lovett@diageo.com to send an email with your views about the report.
Diageo commits to CEO Water Mandate
On the 30 October 2007 Diageo announced that Paul Walsh had signed up to the CEO Water Mandate, an initiative by business leaders in partnership with the UN Global Compact.
The CEO Water Mandate is a call to action on water in all its critical aspects - sustainable use, conservation, community engagement and performance reporting. Ten other signatories have so far come foward, including the CEOs of Coca-Cola, Nestle, SABMiller and Unilever. Under the mandate Diageo pledges to continue to improve its own performance with regard to water, encouraging commercial partners and others to sign up to the commitment.
In making the move, Paul Walsh said, 'Nothing in nature is more essential to our business than water. To reflect this importance, conserving precious water resources is a vital part of our environmental programme and helping ensure that our communities in Africa have supplies of clean drinking water is central to our community investment. I have signed the CEO Water Mandate to show how seriously we take the sustainability of our business and our communities and encourage others to join us.'
More information on the mandate and its signatories can be found by clicking on the UN Global Compact website link below.
http://www.unglobalcompact.org/Issues/Environment/Water_sustainability/index.html
To get a flavour of our activities, click here to view a number of case studies which reflect the variety of our projects around the world.