New Beginnings Reviews: Saving the water: Oracle Utilities and utility partners give back

After the action-packed Synergy program on the first day of the CS Week conference in Tampa, the Oracle Utilities team, along with utility program attendees, did a little good works.

Everyone gathered for a team-building charity exercise where the group built seven emergency water filtration systems for the Water Works Program.

The Water Works Program is a project which is operated by an organization called the Helping Hands Program Pty Ltd. Their main goal is to maximize their impact in the world by getting involved in and funding life-changing charity projects, and Water Works, especially, has one of the most life-changing, as it offers clean water.

The stats with water are staggering:

Nearly 1 billion people worldwide have no access to safe drinking water. Unsafe drinking water is the biggest killer of children under the age of 5 – 1.8 million children die every year – that’s 5000 every day. 50% of hospital beds world-wide are taken up by those suffering from water-borne diseases.

So the seven teams were excited to make an impact on those staggering stats—even if just a small impact.

First the team elected official builders—mostly by a democratic process. The official builders were then blindfolded. (The blindfolds are symbolic of trachoma, a water-spread infection that is a leading cause of blindness in the world, and are meant as a physical reminder of this burden.)

The builders are allowed touch everything in the kit’s box. Everyone else is allowed to see but not touch what’s in the box. (So, yes, truly an exercise in team work.)

But, instead of another 1,000 words, here are some pictures to tell the story.