LifeStraw: Delivering Clean Water for the Developing World
- Public Event
This event is co-presented by Engineers for a Sustainable World, Caltech (ESW), a student organization that brings together those with interests in international development, scientific problem-solving and partnership with developing communities, with the objective of raising awareness of development issues and the critical role of engineers and scientists to engage in socially responsible endeavors, and the Caltech Y's Social Activism Speaker Series (SASS), which focuses attention on current social and political issues by inviting prominent activists to speak to the Caltech community and the public, and to share their experiences and perspectives.
Every day, 6,000 people, mostly children, die from drinking dirty water. In the past ten years, diarrhea alone has killed more children than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II. Half of the world's poor suffer from water-borne diseases, and more than one billion people worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water.
Sharing a passion to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of "reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water" by the year 2015, the Swiss-based Vestergaard-Frandsen recognized this immense sense of urgency. The company developed a revolutionary device called LifeStraw to ensure that simple access to safe drinking water becomes a basic human right. LifeStraw is a personal, mobile, water-purification tool that turns even the dirtiest water into safe drinking water, offering relief from water-borne diseases of major public concern such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery and diarrhea.
Safe water interventions have vast potential to transform the lives of millions, especially in crucial areas such as poverty eradication, environmental upgradation, quality of life, child development and gender equality. This event serves to illustrate both SASS and ESW's goals to raise awareness regarding international development issues and the critical role of engineers and scientists play in engaging in socially responsible endeavors. The life-changing impact of Lifestraw has been recognized worldwide, being awarded Best Invention of the Year by Time Magazine, Innovation of the Year by Esquire Magazine, and Europe's Best Invention by Reader's Digest. Forbes Magazine calls it one of the Ten Things That Will Change The Way We Live.
Presenter Peter Cleary is the New York-based Communications Director for Vestergaard-Frandsen. He has over 20 years of experience in the field of communications. Before taking the position at VF, he was a Press Secretary on Capitol Hill for a Member of Congress, and worked at leading non-profit organizations and global public relations firms.