WaterAid appoints R/GA to redevelop its global digital presence

The project will be led out of R/GA Singapore, which will be responsible for developing an entirely new digital platform for WaterAid. At the core of this will be a new website that will better communicate WaterAid's message of ‘Water and Sanitation For All’ to a much wider audience.

WaterAid operates programmes across 26 countries in the Africa, Asia and the Pacific region to improve access to safe water, hygiene and sanitation in some of the world’s poorest communities. 

“As an organisation that is dedicated to helping people escape the poverty and disease caused by living with insanitation, WaterAid’s message has a truly global audience that needs to be reached,” said Chris Osborne, WaterAid’s Digital Lead.

Osborne says R/GA’s "creative DNA, entrepreneurial people and global experience" has made it the ideal partner take WaterAid’s story to the masses.

That prospect is an exciting one for Mark Kozlowski (pictured), creative director at R/GA Singapore. He says he believes "passionately in the power that digital has to inspire large numbers of people and to create a groundswell of support for a particular movement”.

Kozlowski says the agency initially did not have much awareness of WaterAid or the enormity of the water shortages facing parts of the world. “We were simply shocked to know over one billion human beings lack access to clean water. How is it possible that the most vital resource that humans need isn’t available to so many people? And how did we not know about it? These questions worried us.”

R/GA’s research found people around the world wanted to do something but didn't know where to start. “Our task was clear: create a platform to inspire action and to harness the collective will to do something about the crisis,” says Kozlowski.

According to WaterAid, one in eight people in the world does not have access to safe water, while two-fifths of the global population do not have adequate sanitation.