More water means a better quality of life, children are enabled to get to school and gain better employment opportunities. Families can irrigate crops, generate income and rise above subsistence levels, restoring dignity through improved health, hygiene and poverty alleviation.
The unlocked time to focus on improved productivity, education, work and play, empowers people with the opportunity to become self-sufficient and break free from the poverty cycle.
65,000+ Hippo Rollers have already been distributed to 56 countries over the past 29 years and have positively impacted on a conservative estimate of 650,000+ direct beneficiaries and many more indirectly. Scaling up will allow us to broaden our footprint globally and improve product affordability through bulk distribution and local manufacture.
UNICEF revealed that 2,2 billion people still lack access to safe, readily available water at home. Worldwide, women and girls spend 200 million hours fetching water every day, wasting valuable time that could rather be spent on education and income opportunities.
Hippo Roller is a social enterprise organisation based in South Africa that manufactures and distributes Hippo Rollers with the aid of sponsors and donors for the past 30+ years now. Managed by its Founder, Grant Gibbs and his family, Hippo Roller have built a sustainable business supplying Hippo Rollers and related products to Corporate businesses for social upliftment and brand-building promotions; NGOs for improving access to water, saving time for other important activities and improved education and employment opportunities; Donors for helping rural and impoverished communities around the world and Governments.
The Hippo Roller was first designed in 1991 by two other South Africans, Pettie Petzer and Johan Jonker who received their first design award in 1992 from the SABS (South African Bureau of Standards) Design Institute. Despite a number of small improvements over the years the original design is primarily unchanged.
Hippo Roller plans to scale up by partnering with like-minded organisations to facilitate local manufacture in other regions to significantly reduce the “landed cost” and increase affordability and distribution.
