Our Mission

At Water4, we are no strangers to pivoting in order to get the job done. We adjust course, evolve, and creatively disrupt in the name of offering the best solutions to our rural customers and investments for our funding partners. Supporters of Water4 might recognize our mission statement: “Eradicating the world’s water crisis through local, missional businesses.” While not inaccurate, it doesn’t capture all we do with our trademark panache. So we set to work, digging deeper and finding the essential root of who we are and what we stand for. As a result, Water4 is proud to announce our new mission statement, encapsulated in three powerful statements: Water is life. Business empowers. Love works. 

These principles don’t just define our organization’s evolution over time but also fuel our relentless commitment to tackling the problem of access to safe water head-on, pioneering innovative solutions, driving economic development, and igniting opportunities across Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. We refuse to settle for the status quo; instead, we push boundaries, challenge norms, and inspire leaders to join us on this transformative mission. 

Water is life. 

There is no life without water. It is a foundational need, and until that need is met, life cannot flourish. So providing safe water is not just about health, but it is a foundation on which people can build beautiful, complex, and thriving lives. Over time, this truth has changed our entire operating system, moving us from hand pumps with maintenance programs to where we are today building safe water utilities that provide piped water directly to people’s doorsteps. You don’t want life far away, you want it at your home. People can’t flourish when they don’t know how long their pump will work or who’s ultimately responsible for fixing it. Children can’t go to school when they still have to walk hours to gather water for their family. In order to help our customers make the most of life, we have to offer them water that’s safe, convenient, affordable, and reliable. Only then will we provide the opportunity for the same development that we’ve seen in other places throughout history. In the countries where we work, we routinely find ourselves in fields of broken wells with not a drop of water coming out of them. But where our businesses have intervened and offer a professionalized option that meets customer demands and ensures safe water delivery that works 24/7, we’re creating a different reality and witnessing a truth we’re simply not willing to turn our back on: water is life and we are in the relentless pursuit of endlessly flowing water to nourish endlessly flourishing life. Our goal remains steadfast: to ensure safe water is piped to every home and community. Always. Until there are reliable, business-backed taps at every home and safe water across every community, our work isn’t finished.

Business empowers. 

Businesses exist to solve problems. They make products or perform services that end a pain, price and sell to a market, and create value in doing so. The business profits from the sale but so does the customer, and that mutual profit is the magic we see everyday. Every day, customers everywhere vote with their purchases on which businesses are solving their problems and which ones should go under. In a world where handouts and temporary fixes are the norm, businesses offer an empowering relationship where people are customers who determine a business’ success, not beneficiaries who have to take what they can get. With NUMA water, every product and service starts with the customer’s need and feedback in mind, which is reflected in our price of less than 1 cent per gallon. Our safe water solutions are offering rural and small communities a choice they previously didn’t have, a relationship that allows them to shape their own future, and a reliable resource on which they can build their lives, and their own livelihoods.

We’ve faced skepticism for charging for water, but our approach has proven revolutionary. It’s only in charging what something costs that you learn if something works. We provide the solution we were asked for by local communities in Africa and are able to continuously expand to more untapped areas, improve our infrastructure, and adapt as needed by watching weekly sales. When the business profits, people profit, and put our product to work to generate income for themselves in innovative ways. Profit isn’t a dirty word. It’s a symbol of sustainability and progress, fueling our mission to flip the narrative of crisis to that of opportunity by leveraging the compassion of charity with the wisdom of business every day.

Love works. 

Business is the answer, but love is the reason. Love is at the heart of everything we do. It drives our commitment to finding real, lasting solutions and compels us to care for one another, alleviate suffering, and go further to promote flourishing. In building our businesses, we act out this love by listening to the needs of our customers, understanding the markets we serve, and truly addressing the problems they face, not just for a day or a month but for generations to come. We work together as co-workers, with compassion and mutual respect, rather than unilaterally offering our conceived solutions in the guise of pity. This is how we are answering God’s call to love one another, and it is ultimately how we’re able to make the difficult decisions, to push boundaries, and save lives. 

As we embark on this new chapter guided by our mission to provide safe water, empower communities through durable businesses, and spread love in all we do, we invite you to join us. Together, we can create a world where access to safe water for all is a reality, where all communities thrive through self-reliance and economic empowerment, and where love serves as the cornerstone of permanent change.