Member Profile: PCI

PCI’s mission is to prevent disease, improve community health and promote sustainable development worldwide. We understand that increasing access to cost-effective and sustainable water and sanitation services is essential to helping children and communities prevent disease. PCI works together with vulnerable communities to create long-term change that not only brings about better health, but also has positive economic, environmental, and social impacts.

PCI is recognized globally for its water, sanitation and environmental health programs. By working together with communities, PCI provides access to sufficiently clean drinking water for cooking, bathing, washing, and irrigation. Additionally, PCI addresses wide ranging environmental challenges, working with national, regional and local community stakeholders to protect and conserve their environment through watershed management, the construction and maintenance of wastewater treatment plants, solid waste management programs, and soil and water conservation activities. A current example of PCI programming is the Parivartan program in India, funded by BMGF, which is designed to catalyze collective community action to promote shifts in social norms and behavior change to increase adoption of key family health and sanitation practices and enhance accountability and equity of health and sanitation services. PCI has also recently received funding from the Starbucks Foundation Ethos Water Fund for programs in Tanzania and Ethiopia for the construction and rehabilitating of water points, forming community-led water user groups, and improving water and sanitation practices.

One of the hallmarks of PCI’s water programming is the central role played by the community in the identification of needs, contribution of labor and materials for building, and ongoing maintenance of systems. Community mobilization and engagement in decision making and management help ensure appropriate responses to priority needs and long-term solutions that go beyond water, sanitation, and environmental health.

The following are illustrative examples of PCI’s water activities:
• Activities at the household level: building and/or improving household water systems; building and/or improving latrines; improving disposal of waste water and solid waste; improving household hygiene practices; water purification for drinking and cooking (boiling, solar treatment, chlorination, etc.).
• Activities at the community level: school-based clean water education and use; gender equity in decision-making involving water resources, establishing water committees and building local capacity to organize and manage water and sanitation projects; establishing and improving lines of communication between communities and local governments; conducting environmental assessments; building/improving community water and irrigation systems; watershed management; digging bore holes or wells.
• Activities at national/regional levels: advocacy, policy dialogue and legislation (water rights, importance of the environment); water resource quality, responsible use and conservation; coordination and networking; awareness-raising about the implications of water and sanitation practices for health; establishing or improving standards, protocols, and norms related to any of the above; organizational capacity building for national and regional water and sanitation networks; research and documentation of best practices via guidelines, protocols, manuals and training; information database development and management.

Founded in 1961, PCI is an international non-profit organization dedicated to preventing disease, improving community health and promoting sustainable development worldwide. With U.S. offices in San Diego, CA, and Washington, DC, PCI currently operates in 16 countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Sectoral focus areas include: capacity building; health and nutrition; water and sanitation; food and livelihood security; and disaster risk management. With a FY13 operating budget of $37 million, PCI employs over 800 staff (over 95% of whom are local nationals based in the field) who, together with thousands of volunteers, serve over 6 million people annually.

PCI currently manages 58 programs spanning Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Malawi, Mexico, Nicaragua, South Africa, Tanzania, United States, and Zambia.