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As we recently reported, 10 of GE’s solar-powered water purification units were shipped to earthquake-stricken Haiti to help with the country’s desperate needs for clean water. Now, seven of the Sunspring units are up and running — with each able to provide safe water for up to 10,000 people per day. Our Sunspring partner, Innovative Water Technologies, was hard at work this week completing installations that bring the total of available clean water in the Port au Prince area to over 40,000 gallons per day. The video below was created and produced by Mark Tchelistcheff of openfilms.net and documents the installation at the SOS Children’s Village orphanage in Santo, Haiti.

Of the $2.5 million that GE has targeted for earthquake relief in Haiti, $1 million will be used to help the next phase of the response effort — recovery. That stage is already underway with solar-powered water purification units now shipping to the devasted country, along with critically needed medical technologies (such as ultrasound, anesthesia and x-ray) and mobile video units to help search and rescue teams. In addition to the $2.5 million pledge, GE employees have donated $1.5 million to organizations supporting the relief efforts, half of which comes from matching grants from the GE Foundation.

GE’s presence has been growing significantly in Africa in recent years — and part of that has been in the form of medical aid to communities in need. This week, a GE team made up of leaders in GE’s African American Forum traveled to Africa to meet with government officials and business leaders — and to visit healthcare facilities where GE has provided solutions that include healthcare equipment and support with water, energy, communications and infrastructure development.

With veterans being honored all over the world on November 11 — Veterans Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day and Armistice Day in other countries — we’re saluting GE employees this week who have served their country and now are putting the skills they honed in the military to work right here. Yesterday, we met Staff Sgt. Justin Brumberg, who went from GE’s research labs to Iraq and back. Today, in the audio slide show below, we meet James Eldridge, who works at GE Aviation in Lynn, Massachusetts. Having joined the U.S. Marines in 1997, James has been on tours of duty all over the world. He’s now drawing on those experiences to help other GE veterans as vice president of the veterans’ council at the Lynn plant. As James says, “There’s leadership in war. You definitely learn to take initiative and take charge and try to do the right thing. In the Marines, we’re taught that we need to get the job done no matter what it takes. I’m in manufacturing. I try to apply all of the fundamentals I learned in the Marines in here.”

With countries around the world honoring veterans this Wednesday — Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day and Armistice Day elsewhere — we’re taking a look this week at some of the GE employees who have served in the military and are now putting their leadership skills and uncompromising character to work across the company. There are currently more than 11,000 self-identified US veterans at GE — and many more who served their countries outside the US. In our first video, Staff Sergeant Justin Brumberg describes both his service in Iraq — and his work on pulse detonation engine technologies as a combustion research engineer in the lab at GE Global Research.