Changing Lives Challenge

Making a difference in people's lives is what we do at United Utilities - whether we're providing essential water services to homes and businesses or working with community groups to breathe new life into neighbourhoods.

Changing Lives - the challenge

In 2008, United Nation's Year of Sanitation, the leaders of United Utilities were given a glimpse of a world where people don't have access to basic facilities like water and toilets.  The Executive Leadership Team were given just one week to build a block of toilets for use by the local school and community.

Watch our video and see the Changing Lives Challenge as it happened.  You'll hear the United Utilities leadership team's story and get a glimpse how we've helped WaterAid change lives in Zambia.

Changing Lives - achievements

Things have changed quite a bit for the Changing Lives Partners - Hope through Action, WaterAid and Youth Sport Trust.

Number of lives changed: 13,220

42,600 people in total in Zambia given access to clean, safe water

• 4,700 people in the Moze district given access to clean water (target 7000)
• 1647 people in Moze district provided with household latrines
• 14 double school latrines constructed

• 13 Young Devlopment Officers appointed and trained (target 11)
• 2588 young officials in 13 sports (target 1300)
• 272 new tutors trained in 13 sports
• 15 new awards created across 13 sports

V Matched funded for Youth Sport Trust £329,000 (£166,000 08/09 £166,000 09/10)

Hope through Action:

The local council in Mbekweni granted a new 50-year lease for the Sports Stadium and the legal documentation for the Hope through Action Foundation in South Africa has been drawn up and signed.  The stadium has been redesigned in order to reach more people in the township of Mbekweni.The Head of Sports Science at Stellenbosch University rewrote the plans based on his work with street children in Brazil. As a result there will be more pitches (which means more children can get involved) and smaller teams (5 a-side as opposed to 11 a-side) so that the children are never more than 20-30 metres from a coach and will benefit from 1-1 coaching.

Despite all of the changes the building work is still due to be completed in time for the 2010 World cup - in fact the opening ceremony has been booked for the 12th June 2010!

Lord Mawhinney of the Football league board has granted a charitable donation of £60,000 per annum (for two years) to the charity, in recognition of the development of sporting opportunities in the Township.

WaterAid:

An additional 4,000 people in the Monze District of Zambia now have access to clean water and sanitation.  14 new latrines have been built for schools - in addition to the 3 built by the ELT in June last year! 

WaterAid has also identified the area and programme of work for the Technical Development side of the partnership agreement.  Building on from their management development plan carried out last year, the secondee(s) will be asked to review the capacity of WaterAid and its partners in the urban area of Lusaka with a view to developing their middle and low-level staff. 

Since 1994, you and the North West based supporters of WaterAid have raised a staggering £11,749,869.  See the WaterAid pages for more information on one of the projects completed by the funding from United Utilities.

Youth Sport Trust:

Thanks to your support, the Youth Sport Trust will be able to continue the Young Officials Development Officer programme until December 2010. 

What is a YODO?

Since September 2008 2588 young officials have been trained. 4% of these young officials stated they had a disability and 23% were from a black and ethnic minority background. In addition to the young officials, the YODOs have supported the training of 272 new tutors in swimming, table tennis, gymnastics, volleyball and tennis.