The Procter & Gamble Fund has engaged Aquaya together with the Center for Communications Programs (CCP) at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health to commercially distribute the award-winning PUR® Purifier of Water in Indonesia. Aquaya's local partner is Yayasan Dian Desa (YDD), an Indonesian appropriate technology NGO based in Yogyakarta, Central Java.

PUR® is a particularly effective product for end-users who drink muddy water, such as is typically found in surface water sources such as streams and ponds. According to Indonesian government data from 2003, some 5.6 million Indonesian families rely at least in part on surface waters as their primary water supply source.

Aquaya worked with PUR® in two emergency response contexts (the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 and the Central Java earthquake of May 2006). We have developed a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for distributing PUR® in disasters, intended for use by emergency responders. The SOP document can be downloaded in English, Spanish, Urdu, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Subsequently, Aquaya helped secure regulatory approval for PUR® in Indonesia and has arranged for initial import of PUR® into the country. We have worked with YDD and CCP to locate appropriate markets for PUR® and to develop suitable promotional and educational materials to support commercial distribution of the product. An example of this "spatial segmentation" of the market for PUR can be viewed here.

The first phase of the PURelief project was completed in October 2007, with Aquaya and CCP partners having providing over 3 million liters of water treatment capacity to victims of the Central Java earthquake of May 2006. As of October 2007, Aquaya partner YDD has also commercially distributed an additional 700,000 liters of treatment capacity to end-users in Kalimantan, South Sumatra, and Sulawesi.

We are currently examining alternative delivery models for PUR that stand to increase coverage and access.