It all started in 1984

In the beginning of the 1980s, Swedish movie director and actor Torgny Anderberg shot the short documentary Död Jord (Dead Earth), a movie about draught and famine in southern Peru. The movie aired on Swedish television in 1984.

The film received a great deal of attention from Atlas Copco’s employees in Sweden who took the initiative to raise money for the disaster-afflicted community in Peru. The initiators also began thinking about how they, with the help of Atlas Copco’s products and employee expertise, could help those in need. They founded the Water for All organization and the Board of Directors of Atlas Copco AB responded by pledging to match its employees' donations.

By the mid-1990s, Water for All had, in collaboration with Save the Children, drilled over 500 wells in Peru, wells that helped to save lives. 

"The Yellow Rig"

Water for All started to support more projects around the world and an Atlas Copco drill rig soon became the symbol for the organization’s work in Africa.

Atlas Copco donated a smaller prototype rig to Water for All in 1990. It was given the name “The Yellow Rig” and was shipped to Kenya where it was used for two large-scale water projects that started in 1991 and 1996. Over a four-year period, the yellow rig drilled almost 400 holes. 

In the beginning of 2000, the rig was transferred to the area around the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. Today, the yellow rig is the property of the International Aid Services organization in Khartoum, commemorating the fact that it helped give people access to clean drinking water for 25 years.