FairAction exists to help achieve SDG 6.1: safe and affordable drinking water for all. Access is not achieved when infrastructure is installed. It is achieved when water services are safe, reliable, affordable, used by the community, properly managed, and able to keep working over time.
Dr Samuel Adeoti, Founder & CEO of FairactionA result not designed to be sustainable is not a solution.
When a water point is installed, a community reorganises around it. Families stop walking to distant streams. Children grow up drinking from the new source. Routines, school attendance, and daily life all depend on it. When the system fails, they are forced back to the stream they left behind, now far more contaminated, and their bodies are no longer adapted to it. People fall sick. People die.
Closing the gap between water that is installed and water that keeps working is what it takes to reach SDG 6.1, and it is exactly what FairAction exists to do. In this short talk, our founder explains how.
The model is delivered through three functions, working together as a connected cycle. Diagnosis informs implementation. Implementation produces the evidence that strengthens what the sector knows. Sector strengthening creates the partnerships and conditions for the next community to be served better than the last.
Stronger community outcomes. Stronger sector capability. Wider progress towards SDG 6.1.
Stronger community outcomes. Stronger sector capability. Wider progress towards SDG 6.1.
We map the community, study why services have failed in similar contexts, and assess sustainability risks. The build follows the diagnosis, not a template.
Poor targeting, aid overlap, over- or under- engineered solutions, weak local ownership, infrastructure underutilisation.
Sustainable water service delivered in real communities, with daily monitoring of functionality, water quality, finance, and use. Each project is also a working test of the model.
Safer water, stronger reliability, earlier problem detection, real evidence.
Field learning becomes frameworks, monitoring methods, digital tools, and advisory support that other organisations, governments, and researchers can use.
Stronger sector capability, responsible scale, wider progress towards SDG 6.1.
FairAction is a charity, but it does not give water away. Communities pay an affordable fee for the water they use, and that revenue funds the operation and maintenance that keeps the service running. Sustainability is built into the economics, not dependent on the next grant.
The model built to date has been based on partnerships. Research and digital systems design supported by Clean Water for All Pty Ltd and Essential Need Projects Limited. The intellectual property underpinning the sustainability framework and algorithmic software is held by Clean Water for All Pty Ltd.
SDG 6.1 will be reached through collaboration across the sector: sustainable solutions delivered, sector capacity built, evidence translated into frameworks that other organisations can adapt for the contexts they work in. The FairAction Model is built to contribute to all three.
Let's work together
Underwrite the delivery of a specific water service, from diagnosis through implementation and long-term monitoring.
Sponsor a project→02Support the parts of the model that do not belong to one site: research, digital systems, advisory, and sector publication.
Become a partner→03Apply FairAction's frameworks, monitoring methods, and smart infrastructure designs in your own programmes, with our support.
We won't stop until every child, in every community, has sustainable access to safe and affordable drinking water.
Take fair action today to help achieve this mission.
Stronger community outcomes. Stronger sector capability. Wider progress towards SDG 6.1.