Alfred Pisani, founder and group chairman of Corinthia Hotels and corporate patron of Just a Drop, the international water aid charity, has dedicated Corinthia Hotel funding to sponsor a project in Tanzania.
The project will create two water boreholes for the 30,000 inhabitants of Tabata-Bima in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, including 10,000 students from primary school age to college level, who will directly benefit from the clean water availability.
The Corinthia Hotels’ Tabata-Bima Just a Drop project started last month and is expected to be completed by the end of June, 2012.
Mr Pisani made the announcement of the Tanzania water project on a recent visit to New York, where he discussed the project in detail with Tanzania’s Ambassador to the US Mwanaidi S. Maajar, Karen Hoffman, president and Bradford Group and Just a Drop goodwill ambassador in USA, and Tony Potter, Corinthia Hotels board member.
“Corinthia wanted its first year of commitment to directly support community driven projects in Africa,” Mr Pisani said. “Like this one in Tabata-Bima in Dar es Salaam, providing a long term sustainable benefit to the community and directly helping to give children the gift of life and good health.”
Ms Maajar, in thanking Mr Pisani, noted, “Although Tanzania is a country that is experiencing fast-paced economic growth and booming tourism, without clean water these communities will not benefit from this growth.”
Now in its 50th year of operations, Corinthia Hotels has become an internationally-acclaimed brand of award-winning luxury hotels located in some of Europe’s finest cities such as London, St. Petersburg, Budapest, Lisbon, Prague, and here in Malta. Corinthia Hotels formally adopted the international water aid charity, Just a Drop, as its official charity in 2011.
Just a Drop founder and chairman Fiona Jeffery commented, “We are absolutely delighted that Corinthia, led by Alfred Pisani, is closely involved with the urgent work of Just a Drop. He accepted our invitation to become one of its patrons and he is demonstrating his personal commitment to become involved in helping lift youngsters and their families out of terrible poverty, where even clean water to drink, cook and bathe is otherwise totally lacking.”
Launched in 1998 at World Travel Market, international water-aid charity Just a Drop is a registered charity that raises money to build wells, install boreholes and hand pumps, and carry out sanitation and health education programs in some of the poorest parts of the developing world.
Its aim is to reduce child mortality by delivering accessible clean, safe water where it is needed most. It has already helped over one million children and their families in 29 countries worldwide, and continues to manage crucial projects all around the world.
Just a Drop facts:
• Over 884 million people in the world – do not have access to clean, safe water
• Around 2.5 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation – almost two-fifths of the world’s population
• Over 2.75 million people (over 1.4 million children) die from diseases every year because of unsafe water
• Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at a time
• A child dies around every 20 seconds as a result of water-borne diseases
• £1 is all it takes to provide a child with clean, safe water for 10 years