Background

Hands on the World Global was founded by children's environmental author Rachael Peterpaul Paulson in 2006. 

In the year 2000, the author was invited to be a guest speaker at a United Nations Environmental Children's conference run by UNEP.

The conference was held in honor of the new charter being written that would address the children in our world who are living without the basic needs of life.

It was there that Paulson met with leaders from around the world to discuss the environmental conditions and needs of the children in developing countries. South African leaders spent the most time with her.

She learned how young girls and women must travel miles to fetch water for basic need such as washing, cooking and drinking. Stories were shared of how children were dying from the unsafe water conditions. Also young girls were being harmed on their journey to try and find water.

When Rachael Paulson returned to the USA, she started to donate all proceeds from her books to start a fund that could help with this cause. She spent almost 1 year of research on drilling wells, making contacts and forming teams.

She also kept in contact with these world leaders who encouraged her as a writer to research the subject of rural South Africa and the 700 school villages that did not have running water.

Paulson did better then that, she traveled to Kwa-Zulu-Natal and chose one school village to begin her research. She stayed with the locals in the village, took notes and was shocked to see the conditions of the homes and schools.

Starting with one school, she created a model base where the community could come and learn how they could install water and how she would help to fund the project if they would agree to take ownership. She then took all of her proceeds from her books and put it into the ground of the first project.

Amazed to see the progress the community made after 1000 were helped by the water install, sinks were added to the school and then a food garden. After seeing how the community and the children in the school yearned to learn, she organized workshops both inside of the schools and out.

With a translator on hand, she also taught lessons to the community and distributed health care goods, spoke about HIV protection and delivered supplies that would help with water filtering and sanitation.

The school continued to expand the projects and share with other schools in the district.
After seeing this happen Rachael Paulson started a non profit that would then be based on the success of this first school that she would later call the Green Community Hub. This encouraged Paulson to create a non profit organization and also set up a non profit team in South Africa that would work as the ongoing task force. Here in the USA she encouraged students to assist her in fundraising and also started to take site visits with students encouraging her to set up these bases as future sites for interns and professionals to research and study there while at the same time assisting with managing projects.

Since that time, 2 villages have been set up to be sustainable communites with food and water security and other schools and clinics in the districts are striving to copy the model with the help of Hands on the World Global.

Word has spread and schools and clinics from around the world are applying to become one of the Hands on the World Green Community Hubs.

Schools, scout groups, clubs like Rotary, churches and many companies have come on board to join the team.

Projects have now expanded with the hopes of serving the 700 villages in Kwa-Zulu Natal South Africa.

A potential hub is being sited in India and a school is now being chosen from many who have applied.

A new partnership in Ghana will be based on a new pre-school being built and the focus will be education with Paulson sitting on the advisory board. Hands on the World Global will be assisting with water and sanitation issues. This school will open its doors without running water.