Hamzah Mazari does his homework. As a C-suite executive at GFL Environmental and formerly a Managing Director at Jefferies, Hamzah has spent his career assessing operations and scrutinizing budgets. When he decided to fund a clean water project for his family's ancestral village in southern Punjab, he held Paani to the same standard.
Hamzah comes from the Mazari tribe, a family whose presence in southern Punjab stretches back generations, well before Pakistan's independence. While the family land has been divided over generations, Hamzah still manages a portion of it remotely from the U.S., leasing parcels to tenant farmers and funding charitable work in the surrounding communities. The area is hard to reach and easy to overlook; The closest airport to the village is an hour's drive away, and that's only when it's operational. Otherwise, it is a rugged two-and-a-half-hour drive to Multan. Public services rarely reach remote constituencies like this one.
That gap shows up most brutally in water. Hepatitis and other waterborne diseases are common. Women in the area walk miles each day to collect water, and children miss school because of preventable illness tied to contaminated sources. Previous filtration plants installed by local NGOs had become scrap metal—victims of poor maintenance and low-quality materials. The need for clean water was urgent. The question was who could build something that would actually last.
A Detailed Budget, a Clear Timeline, and a Team That Showed Up
Paani first caught Hamzah's attention through its deep specialization in water — the core of the organization's work alongside food relief, orphan support, and other humanitarian programs. That expertise, combined with projects already completed across Pakistan including one funded by NBA superstar Kyrie Irving's KAI Family Foundation, gave him confidence. But the detail behind it is what held up under examination.
"The budget was very detailed, built from the ground up," Hamzah said. "And there were no surprises."
Before construction, Paani's team conducted a full needs assessment of the area: testing groundwater contamination levels, analyzing water table depth, and evaluating population density to size the system correctly. The recommendation was a reverse osmosis plant engineered specifically for the arsenic and contaminants causing disease in the community.
Paani's team mobilized quickly. They executed against a clear timeline of 120 days, building the system on schedule and on budget. The project cost approximately $17,000. Hamzah maintained direct communication with Paani's founder, Sonny Khan, via a shared WhatsApp group that included the engineers on the ground. Progress was visible in real time, and when questions came up, they were addressed immediately.
"If there was any issue, Sonny was immediately getting in touch with the team locally," Hamzah said.
After the plant was completed, Paani continued sending video updates and documentation, keeping Hamzah connected to the project from thousands of miles away.
"After the plant was built, you guys were still updating on whether everything was going as planned. You can't get that kind of follow-up locally. And it's very tough to find an organization that can coordinate this from the US while having a team on the ground that can actually access remote areas of Pakistan."
He Traveled to the Village and Saw What the Community Did Next
Hamzah flew to Pakistan and visited the village to see the plant running firsthand. The system was fully operational, serving roughly eight thousand people daily with clean water. People from neighboring areas were now traveling to the site, filling drums to carry back to their own villages.
"People come from other locations to fill their drums and take the water back with them," Hamzah said. "The plant serves a much bigger radius than the older, lower quality filtration plants in the area."
But during his visit, Hamzah noticed something striking about the community's relationship with the plant. The villagers had taken personal responsibility for it. They were cleaning the system themselves. They were guarding it against theft. They were treating it as their own.
"They realized this is a higher quality product, and they needed to take care of it," Hamzah said. "With the smaller NGO filtration plants, that same sense of pride wasn't there."
Clean Water as the Foundation
What drew Hamzah to Paani was that their flagship work addresses the most foundational need first.
"Clean drinking water is a basic human need," Hamzah said. "One of the differences in donating to Paani is that you're fulfilling that basic need. There are other charities that address things beyond that, but this is the first level of impact that needs to get addressed."
He also noted that there aren't many US-based charities with teams on the ground in rural Pakistan, which is part of what made Paani stand out.
"Not a lot of US-based charities are focused on South Asia," he said. "There tend to be more local NGOs, and many of them have a very tough time operating consistently."
The experience of funding this project, seeing it built, visiting the site, and watching the community embrace it has already led Hamzah to plan his next project with Paani.
"We'll have to do more of this together," he said. "I look forward to working with you guys on another project we're thinking of."
Whether it's a $500 well or a large-scale plant, Paani builds every project the same way — detailed budget, clear timeline, documented start to finish, and follow-up that continues long after construction ends.
Paani Project has completed over 30,000 water projects serving more than two million people across Pakistan. Every project is documented start to finish with photos, coordinates, and water quality testing. Donors track their project's progress in real time through a dedicated portal. To learn more or fund a project, visit paaniproject.org.