Activity Description: Mexico City is built over an ancient lake, yet in recent years has found itself facing a serious water scarcity problem. This is due in part to the city’s drainage system, built to prevent flooding, which directs the area’s water more than 250 miles away into the ocean. The result: Mexico City is sinking and its water tables are running dry. Government officials estimate that more than 95 percent of the city’s water is not returned to the region’s aquifers and in some places the water tables are dropping three feet per year. When Nestor de Buen, and his co-founders discovered EcoCreto in the lab, they thought their product might be the perfect solution for this environmental challenge.

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The Vestergaard-Frandsen group designs disease control textiles and distributes them profitably on a mass scale. One of their products, the LifeStraw, is a drinking straw with seven types of filters. It purifies up to 185 gallons of water, offering protection from waterborne diseases of major public concerns such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery and diarrhea. As a personal mobile water purification tool, LifeStraw is designed to turn surface water into drinking water.

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This seven-year project is being implemented in the recently reclaimed desert lands between the Suez Canal and the Nile Delta that are irrigated by the Al Salam Canal. The main objective is to support the settlement and agricultural production of about 26,000 families. Project initiatives include: building tertiary irrigation and drainage systems; providing safe drinking water to needy communities; supporting credit banks in extending their operations to the area; and establishing community organizations that can participate in management of the irrigation system.

Activity Description: The Avina Foundation promotes environmentally and socially sustainable development by facilitating the creation of constructive and inclusive communities.

By funding organizations that improve community services and increase opportunities, AVina promotes responsible citizenship, enhances social capital, and contributes to the construction of more sustainable societies.

Some of the sustainable activities Avina has funded or created include: co-launching the Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUNDES); catalyzing the adoption of CSR practices for all businesses that make up Brazil's "Industrial Federation of Rio de Janeiro"; empowering women in agriculture; and delivering skills training and job opportunities to at-risk youth in Peru.

Activity Description: NABUUR.COM is run by Stichting Nabuur, a Netherlands based not-for-profit foundation. In its current development phase, NABUUR.COM depends on donor funding. After 2006 NABUUR.COM will be self financing.

Communities in developing countries can present their issues on NABUUR.COM and ask for the assistance of online volunteers , or "Neighbours." NABUUR.COM provides the community with its own online Village, a group of online volunteers (Neighbours), and a volunteer Facilitator who coordinates the efforts of the Neighbours.

Activity Description: In peri-urban areas of Hyderabad, India, drinking water is delivered in trucks that arrive irregularly and infrequently. This forces women and children to travel to neighboring towns or wait on line for water instead of working or attending school; it also means that families store water for weeks, increasing chances for recontamination.

Heritage Livelihood Services Provider is a project to deliver water sustainably to Hyderabad. An initial investment from the Acumen Fund in infrastructure development will 1) engage local community organizations to 2) educate community members about the value of improved water delivery, and 3) collect user fees from each resident.

Activity Description: The Asian Alliance of Appropriate Technology Practitioners Inc., (APPROTECH ASIA) was established in 1981, to increase the access of the poor to technologies and processes appropriate to their increasing needs and expanding capacities. Its primary role is to facilitate the sharing of appropriate technologies and cooperation among its member and partner-organizations.

Approtech Asia has on-going initiatives on improved cookstove, gasifier, energy-efficient kitchen, clean indoor air, gender-energy-water-poverty, micro-small-medium entrepreneurs (MSMEs) and energy, biofuels and women and rural industry, water-sanitation-hygiene-energy and poverty, green health, community-managed production and processing of herbal medicine, among others.

Activity Description: Since 2001, The American and International Federation of Red Cross network has partnered with an outside NGO supply chain ( International Development Enterprises, IDE) in Northeastern Cambodia in the Prey Veng Water project, to provide over 9,000 portable, low-cost, ceramic water purifiers to poor households. Thanks to seed money from the World Bank Marketplace, the project succesfully transitioned from subsidized, import-driven sales to full-cost, locally-produced (by the Cambodian Red Cross) sales of ceramic filters. Earnings from sales now recover production and distribution costs. IDE is also developing larger ceramic filters to service communities.

Activity Description: Bushproof is a humanitarian and for-profit business that develops and installs low-cost, durable water-filters and well-pumps to increase access to clean, low-cost water. In order to increase local wealth, Bushproof situates production of its pumps in low-income countries and re-investing a percentage of profits into pilot-programs and research.

Bushproof also offers training courses and consultancy services regarding water filtration, sanitation, and NGO management.

Activity Description: Watercone is a solar-powered water desalinator that can produce 1 liter of freshwater a day and can last for 5 years. Users pour in salt-water; the magnified heat inside the cone causes the water to evaporate, condense on the sides of the cone, and then to run down the edges into the collection base. This desalinated water can then be poured out the from the screw cap spout at the tip of the cone.

Activity Description: The Vestergaard-Frandsen group designs disease control textiles and distributes them profitably on a mass scale. Three of the Vestegaard products are: PermaNet, an insecticide-treated anti-malarial net that kills mosquitos upon impact; The LifeStraw, a drinking straw with seven types of filters, that purifies up to 185 gallons of water; and ZeroFly, an insecticide incorporated plastic sheeting that provides shelter and malaria prevention.

Activity Description: NutriStar is a low-cost powdered drink mix containing all the vital micronutrients (including iron, iodine, and vitamin A, nutrients that are essential to human development) , is stable, easily digestible, and tastes good. Because the packets are sold in single-usage form, they are portable, affordable (US$.30) and easy to store long-term.

After a few unsuccesful marketing attempts in the Phillippines and Venezuela, P&G is now fully-functional and succesful in Nicaragua. By using a partnership/licensing model with a local manufacturer, P&G has ensured cheap manufacture and wide distribution of the product to at-need sectors. This partnership additionally benefitted the local community, as the production and sales of NutriStar required the creation of more sustainable livelihoods.

Activity Description: Procter and Gamble has developed a cheap water-filtration system to serve poor communities with no access to clean water. Because the filters are easy-to-use and sold in single-usage form, they are affordable (US$.10) and easy to store and distribute. One packet is enough for 10 gallons, or about two days for a family.

While this filter is largely donated to communities and in bulk for emergency relief, P&G is testing distribution via a sustainable business model in Guatemala, the Philippines, Morocco and Pakistan.

Activity Description: WaterHealth International (WHI) provides innovative business solutions to one of the world's most desperate health crises, the lack of safe, clean and affordable water for the more than two billion people who have little or no access to it. Their highly successful model incorporates an innovative, cost-effective technology designed for the poor, with a franchise model to streamline marketing and distribution and assure uniform water quality and service.