The Peer Water Exchange (PWX), has energized and engaged over 40,000 local, grassroots water projects. Realizing that small-scale, community owned and operated projects were successful in driving change, the Blue Planet Run Foundation set up the PWX to manage and build on this capacity. By providing a platform that is transparent, map-driven, and scalable, the PWX serves as a network to the global water, sanitation and health community where projects are selected, funded, managed, and tracked in a collaborative and efficient way. In this audio interview, Stanford Center for Social Innovation correspondent Sheela Sethuraman talks with Rajesh Shah, the 2010 Tech Award winner in the Intel Environmental category, as he shares this social entrepreneurship model that leverages technology, new media and peer interaction to solve the water crisis.
Rajesh Shah conceived Peer Water Exchange (PWX) in 2003 when given the task of overseeing the funding and managing of water projects for Blue Planet Run Foundation. He immediately saw the problem of scale: how to deliver thousands of small projects and verify their impact?
Extremely interested in sustainability and social equity, Shah teaches and writes on various issues facing humanity, and is now immersed in the world of water. Shah did his undergraduate studies in engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Lafayette College, and received an MS and MBA from the University of California.
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