MARTINSBURG -- Does the world really need another brand of bottled spring water?

Bob Downey, who heads Spero Group Inc., the Martinsburg company marketing Tumai Water, says that yes, the world literally does.

Anti-poverty programs in South Africa and elsewhere get part of the proceeds from every bottle of Tumai purchased.

The water, which can boast the title “Best Tasting Bottled Water in the World” after taking top honors at the Berkeley Springs’ annual water tasting competition earlier this year, is sold in stores in dozens of counties in West Virginia as well as in five other states in the Northeast. It also has distributors as far away as Texas, California and even Europe in negotiations to carry the brand.

“Everyone drinks bottled water and our water costs the same as all the other products on the shelf,’’ Downey explains. “But because we use proceeds to bring safe drinking water, food, clothes, education and other help to some of the poorest parts of the world, this is a way for people to get the drink they need and do a good deed at the same time.”

The name Tumai translates to “hope” in Swahili and the company employs the slogan, “Need a Drink, Drink for a Need.”

Downey said he wanted to enter the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting competition in February “hoping just to get our name out there.” Winning the big prize generated coverage in news outlets ranging from CNN and the BBC to USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. Distributors began flooding Downey with offers to carry the brand, which is bottled from a spring near Danville, Va.

Prior to Berkeley Springs, Tumai had been selling in just three local retail outlets and to a handful of home delivery clients.

While pleased to see the business growing so quickly, Downey says his goal has never been just to sell water.

The 40-year-old Martinsburg native views his business as a way to boost awareness of global poverty and to provide direct, sustained help in easing the devastating cycle of poverty in South Africa and elsewhere.

“We created this business so that we can help people who need help desperately,’’ explains Downey, a graduate of Martinsburg High School and Shepherd University who returned to the area last year to launch the business.

The company is operated like a nonprofit. Central to Spero Group’s business plan is a promise to donate at least 15 percent of its gross profits to do-good work.

Downey says the company currently is putting a quarter of its profits toward charity work and aims to continue to do so.

“If we’re not using the money to pay for goods we need or to expand the company, then it’s going overseas — not as handouts but to change communities so that they don’t need handouts anymore,’’ Downey explains. “As we get more money in, we’re able to do more and more.”

The idea for Tumai came in 2006. Downey, then working in information systems for a company in Schenectady, N.Y., took part in his church-led humanitarian mission trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. “You can’t go there and not be changed,’’ Downey says. “We have people hurting here in the United States, the homeless and others, but it’s not the same kind of poverty. These are people who have nothing.”

And “nothing” extends even to such basics as clean water. Working at an orphanage one day, Downey says he was shocked to see a woman cooking with the only water available — brown, muddy liquid with actual clumps of dirt still visible.

The lack of clean drinking water leaves millions in Africa at risk for disease and kills thousands of children there daily, said Downey, citing a recent report to Congress.

During his time in Johannesburg, Downey said he began talking with other Americans about how to continue to help the community once they’d returned home.

“It dawned on us that almost everybody buys bottled water at least now and then,’’ Downey recalls. “We realized that bottled water could be the way to bring clean drinking water and lots of other help to these communities. By using a portion of our profits from each bottle, we could create a flow of help that would make a huge difference in people’s lives.”

He soon teamed up with two like-minded New Yorkers, James Maddalone and Dan Magid, to create a business model. Downey’s partners, who remain in New York, agreed with his desire to base the company in West Virginia.

“If we could start a successful business in West Virginia and help our state, too, then that’s what I wanted to do,’’ said Downey, who lives in Martinsburg with his wife, Michele, and his preschool-age son and daughter. Among the beneficiaries of Tumai profits so far: the Mpumalanga Christian Network and its orphanages in South Africa and Mozambique and a collaboration with an engineering firm in Kenya to put in sanitary wells and water pumps in five villages.

Says Downey: “It doesn’t seem like a big deal, buying a bottle of water, but already we’re seeing lives changed.”

For on Tumai, go online to www.tumaiwater.com or call the company toll-free at 866-94-TUMAI.