WHAT THE STANDARD IS: Splash is dedicated to focusing on kids in need across a range of institutions – schools, orphanages, hospitals, feeding centers, and shelters.  Splash has no explicit restrictions regarding the institutions where we will work, but given the level of need and our financial resources, our projects generally focus on those institutions dedicated to serving kids with the most need.  As an example, while there are children in all hospitals in areas where we work, we focus on children’s hospitals. Similarly, while there are some private schools where we work without access to clean water, clean hands, and clean toilets, our current programming in Addis, Kathmandu, and Kolkata is focused on government schools, where the need is normally the greatest.  While we are likely to always work in a range of institutions, our current largest focus (outside of China) is in schools. This will likely continue to be the focus in the years-to-come.

Currently our individual projects are designed with a specific subset of institutions. Some examples are below:

Addis – Splash in Ethiopia has done installations of water filtration systems in orphanages, schools, and shelters, but is currently focused on achieving complete coverage of government schools in Addis.  We continue to support existing non-government school sites, and have gathered data on the level of need in private schools in Addis, but our funding is primarily dedicated to the government schools given their level of need. We also continue to support a small number of non-school institutions.

Kolkata – Splash is focused on government school sites across the urban setting.  Private schools without the means to provide clean water, hands, and toilets for their students could (and would be) in scope for Splash once we complete the current project in Kolkata focused on government school sites. Again, we will happily work in other settings (and with other partners) across India as long as we have funding that covers our team costs for this activity and those settings can still leverage our existing model and expertise (i.e. Miracle Foundation in Mumbai).

China – Splash is focused on Children’s and Social Welfare institutes under the Ministry of Civil Affairs that serve orphaned children.  While there may be need at other institutes specifically for the elderly, these are NOT in scope for our current programming.  Additionally, schools in China could be in scope in the future, but only with new dedicated funding to that segment. Splash will consider doing installations in these sites as part of our social enterprise activities but only if we were assured that this work was fully paid for by non-Splash funds.

Kathmandu – Through a local partner, SmartPaani, Splash is focused on increasing WASH in Schools coverage of all government schools in three key districts in Kathmandu Valley.  We do not consider rural sites within these districts to be in geographic scope (see next sub-section).  Additionally, while we recognize there is need at many private schools in this urban area, we would not expand our non-social enterprise programming to non-government schools without new funding streams.

Institutional Settings v. Households

While our intent is to ensure full access to clean water, clean hands, and clean toilets (including at home), we are NOT working (nor expect to work) directly in households. We will explore how we can leverage the sites we currently work at to affect change at homes, and will evaluate other methods to best achieve coverage at the residences of all children in the areas where we work.

Disaster Response

Splash is not an emergency response/disaster relief organization and is explicitly working on long-term development. That said, we do work in areas of the world that are prone to conflict and disaster, and thus must evaluate each circumstance as it arises.  When existing Splash infrastructure and programming (or our learnings via technical assistance) can be leveraged for disaster response, we will assess opportunities to do so.  One example of this was community use of existing Splash systems at schools in Kathmandu, which proved durable and became an important local resource following the 2015 earthquake in that area.  Schools became a natural gathering place for displaced individuals and for communities to access safe drinking water, and Splash systems could be easily repurposed for community use.  However, we do not have the financial or staff capacity to move into new areas post-disaster to directly provide short-term WASH relief.

WHAT THE STANDARD IS: Splash has worked in Urban, Peri-Urban, and Rural settings.  However, the focus of most of Splash’s current efforts is (and will continue to be) in urban settings, with a focus on full coverage in two large cities (Addis Ababa and Kolkata). We believe this focus on large, current or future ‘mega-cities’, is warranted both for:

1. Demographic reasons - as the quantity of urban poor, particularly those living in urban slums, continues to grow as rural migrations to cities has grown over the past several decades (and is projected to continue to do so over the next 50 years).    
2. Gap in existing WASH programs   We believe that our limited financial resources are best utilized in areas where other non-profit organizations are not focused (thus avoiding overlap).  As most other groups focus on rural and peri-urban settings, we have increasingly chosen to build, test, and evaluate WASH interventions in large and mega-cities.  

We do not anticipate the expansion of Splash staff into any new countries/cities until new funding has been secured to complete all current projects. We are, however, open to providing technical assistance to organizations working in other locales and are already doing so.