Watering the World

Her Success Story

This week Ivy Slater, host of Her Success Story, chats with her guest, Eric Stowe. The two return to this season’s nonprofit series, and talk about the importance of safe water and the impact that has been made by Splash since its beginning. Eric tells us, “At present day, there should be no child anywhere that’s left to drink unsafe water simply because of where they’re born and where they live.” In this episode, we discuss:

• Why he started Splash, and implemented the concepts that continue to grow

• What has been accomplished since the start of this NGO in 2007

• How they are able to offer 1m children access to safe water daily

• What Splash does to help the more than 2 billion people globally who don’t have access to safe water

• Why their niche starts with schools in urban areas

• Why so much of Splash’s work focuses on behavioral changes from the conduit of water, sanitation, hygiene, and menstrual health

• Eric’s unlikely retirement plan to put himself out of business and create perpetual growth

• Splash’s hope for a diminishing role by working with local organizations to eliminate the problem

• How he has managed building and maintaining relationships as a global institution

• Advice for anyone considering a startup

Eric is the Founder and CEO of Splash. Since 2007, Eric’s NGO has been spearheading a new model for international development—one that challenges the way the charitable sector thinks about transparency, philanthropy, collaboration and impact. His ideas have been shared through publications in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Forbes, Chronicle of Philanthropy, CS Monitor, Wired, Devex, and more.

Splash is at the forefront of a growing movement to ensure that children in urban poverty have the resources they need to thrive and realize their full potential. Splash designs child-focused water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH), and menstrual health solutions with governments in some of the world’s biggest, low-resource cities. Working in schools, hospitals, shelters and orphanages, Mr. Stowe’s organization now serves more than 1,000,000 children daily across 8 countries. Website: https://www.splash.org/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estowe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericstowe