Our history

WaterAid Australia has been working with communities around the world to increase their access to clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene for over 20 years. 

WaterAid Australia was founded in 2004 in collaboration between the water industry and the international aid sector, and officially launched at Parliament House by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Honourable Alexander Downer, in 2005. Tony Kelly was WaterAid Australia’s Founding Chair.

We began funding projects in Papua New Guinea in 2004. And in Timor-Leste in 2005.

WaterAid Australia became one of four founding members of WaterAid International, along with the United Kingdom, America and Sweden. And now Canada, India and Japan have joined. We work together to help change lives.

We have supported water, sanitation and hygiene programs in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, Nepal, Mozambique and Tanzania with funding from the Australian government.

Our institutional and philanthropic fundraising has grown to over $15 million annually. We have many committed corporate, foundation, community and individual supporters, as well as dynamic fundraising committees who run successful events including Gala Balls and Golf Days.

In the last  years, we have launched national campaigns to boost public awareness and government support for our work.

We employ approximately 40 full-time staff in Australia and 80 staff in the country programs we fund.

We established a country program in Cambodia in 2013, in the Solomon Islands in 2015 and in Myanmar in 2016.

In 2017, we handed management of our Myanmar country program to WaterAid UK and closed our Solomon Islands country program for regionally strategic reasons.

In 2024, we celebrated our 20 Year Anniversary as a time to reflect on all we have achieved alongside communities in the last 20 years thanks to our many supporters. 

We are working towards a world where everyone, everywhere has access to clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene within a generation.