About Us
Our Mission
Surge for Water invests in communities with safe water, sanitation, hygiene and menstrual health solutions to help end the cycle of poverty
Community Driven
Women Led, Women Centered
Scaling Partnerships
Our Founder’s Story
Shilpa Alva, Executive Director, United States
My motivation to start Surge began when I was a child visiting family in India. I saw children my age who didn’t have the luxury of playing; instead many were fetching water. Even as a seven year old child, I saw the inequity – children should not have to bear this kind of responsibility for their family’s survival.
When I was 21, I spent a few months on a teaching assignment in Rajgarh, a remote Indian village. Many of my students missed school due to water-borne illnesses or constraints. I once again witnessed how access to water was a fundamental precursor to attending school – and getting a proper education.
The founding of Surge in 2008 was in response to this essential need and a calling.
In 2014, this calling intensified. All this while, I was running Surge while also managing a successful Management Consultant career. I realized that I had to go all in to bring Surge to its full potential. And so I started to spend more time in the communities where we work. This is how Surge’s community-led, women centered model came to be. I listened to and learned from the locals and understood that in order to drive sustainable change it had to be them driving the agenda on their terms and timeline.
Today, a global team of talented staff and volunteers run Surge. And together with the local communities where we work, we are making a transformational difference.
