Marla Smith-Nilson ’ 94
founder and executive director
Organization: Water 1st International, www.water1st.org.
What it does: Works with
communities to gain access to
potable water and improved
sanitation, whether it’s digging
a well and installing a pump
or something more complex.
Provides training to community
organizers so systems become
self-sustaining.
Founded: 2005
Where: Based in Seattle; sponsors projects in Ethiopia, Honduras, India and Bangladesh.
Participation: Five staff;
65,000 people served.
Annual budget: $1.3 million
Motivation: “Growing up
[in southern Arizona], I was
really aware of how important
water is. … It really hit on one
particular trip [to Mexico]
when I was a teenager. We
were water-skiing, and I saw
girls walk to that same lake and collect water and take it back to
their families. The unfairness of that really struck me at the time,
and the fact that I was born three hours north of them set the
path for my life. I had a very different teenage life than they did
because I won the birth lottery.”
Carolina connection: “It was at UNC where I started to learn
that it was less of an engineering problem and more of a social
problem. The technical solutions have already been invented,
and there are technical people in the countries where there is
poverty. That’s not really the issue. It’s how to organize communities so systems last. It’s been my path to realize that rather than
doing the engineering work myself, I need to put myself in a
position of raising money and supporting local people and finding really good organizations that know how to do this work in
a way that will last.”
Advice for others: “Try and be humble, curious and open to
new possibilities, rather than projecting [a] point of view. … If
taking a back seat to let local experts do the ‘hands-on’ work
means that the people we serve are provided with a better prod-
uct, then I am more than happy to do that.”
COURTESY OF WATER 1ST INTERNATIONAL
‘In Honduras, our projects provide every household with a
water tap right on the front porch. They’ve gone from a life
Now almost all the kids in that village are in school.’
