The Reece Group celebrated World Plumbing Day with the launch of the independent charity, Reece Foundation.

The aim of the foundation is to improve access to clean water and sanitation across the world. Its work will include strategic partnerships, disaster relief, advocacy and look to long-term, sustainable solutions into water scarcity and quality.

“For most of us, water is a basic need and easily accessible, but sadly this isn’t the case for almost 2.3 billion people around the world,” Reece Foundation board chair Ipsita Wright says.

“Our vision is to create a world where everyone has access to clean water and sanitation by connecting communities with trade skills and working together to implement systems that both increase access and are sustainable.”

Reece Group chief communications officer, Lizzy Geremia, says the Foundation allows Reece to have much greater impact, helping more communities through diverse revenue streams and proactively identify projects that the Reece Foundation can support through our customer community: “It gives us room to grow and scale projects to meet the needs of the communities we help. Instead of tradies needing a cause, we’ll make it easy for them – they just have to volunteer their time, and we’ll share opportunities where they can use their skills to help communities in need.”

There are three main ways to get involved:

• Donate – People and organisations can donate directly to the Foundation which will then be used to fund projects.
• Volunteer – the tradie community can sign up to use their skills to provide access to water to communities in need. Local organisations can also submit project ideas that require trade skills to the Foundation website.
• Reece Foundation Grants – Tradies or an organisation can apply for a Reece Foundation grant to help a project.

As a founding partner and supporter of the Foundation, the Reece Group has made an initial contribution and will continue to support the foundation by providing products and funding for water and sanitation initiatives.

The Reece Foundation is calling on the tradie community to submit partnership ideas or register their interest to volunteer with us in the future. Charitable partners in search of tradie skills are also encouraged to submit their ideas via the Foundation website here.