Kurt Schellpeper, Founder

Founder, Kurt Schellpeper, one day, found himself thinking that there must be a higher purpose to his life. He was an Oxford educated, Senior IT consultant at a Fortune 500 company, and his career was thriving. Although, he was enjoying a long and successful career, he found that he was becoming increasingly uninspired by corporate life. His outside interests and nagging wanderlust eventually took him to Peru, where he was quickly presented with a life and death concern that he had never experienced back home.

“Where do I get clean water?”

His simple question became a daily preoccupation, because the answer was never easy. His experience lead him to develop a plan to import water filters commonly used for camping to areas in Peru. He quickly discovered, however, that that there was little awareness or knowledge about filtration systems in the region, and that education and cost were enormous barriers to entry for the installation and maintenance of the systems, especially in the areas where the filters were needed most such as orphanages and rural areas. Undeterred, Kurt eventually identified strategic partners to help purchase and install filters in areas of need, and soon identified where the cycle of poverty existed in Peru, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world: clean water, knowledge, employment, and economic opportunity.

Kurt established World Solutions Initiative as a means of addressing the four pillars of poverty, in order to create a future filled with help, hope, and happiness for people around the world. As Kurt once said, “I knew that this is what I wanted to pursue, because it’s making a positive difference in the world. I wanted to do something different in my life. Something that would be helpful. I always did some volunteer work, but this was the most important thing I’ve ever done.”