Just Add Water—Cooking Up Successful Corporate-NGO Partnerships

What do you get when you combine a quarter cup of water with table salt and a zap from a car battery? Enough chlorine to purify 200 liters of drinking water.

I was fascinated last spring when I first encountered the MSR SE200 Community Chlorine Maker at the annual PATH Community Breakfast innovation fair—fascinated not only by how something so small could pack such a punch, but also by the story of how an outdoor recreation equipment company came to partner with one of the world’s leading global development nonprofits around water purification.

I recently had an opportunity to learn more about the project when Patrick Diller from MSR (Mountain Safety Research) Global Health and Jesse Schubert from PATH joined me in a community conversation about innovative corporate-nonprofit partnerships.   

Interestingly, I learned that the Chlorine Maker originated from a 1999 MSR-DARPA partnership, which yielded a pen-sized device that provided troops with the ability to create enough chlorine to purify up to 4 liters of water in 30 seconds. MSR quickly realized that many of their products had the potential for broader global health applications, and wanted to think about how to leverage their technology for global good.

Read Just Add Water—Cooking up Successful Corporate-NGO Partnerships on FSG.org >