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Charitable Donations Committee: Giving To Others
For almost ten years now our association recognized that many people in third world countries had never experienced clean safe drinking water, latrines or wash and shower stations. We saw an opportunity to share not only our technology but also our finances to make a better life for those less fortunate than ourselves. Where once there was only sadness, sickness and death, now there are laughing, smiling children. Adults are now living longer more productive lives, enjoying life and their families. I can’t imagine a greater gift that could be given.
Things are changing. In the past your AWWOA Executive chose Water For People Canada as the agency to direct your charitable donations to. Water For People were chosen because at the time WFPC could offer small water and or wastewater projects that we as an organization could fund on our own. We deliberately chose children’s schools orphanages and small communities because the project would benefit the greatest number of people. Today Water For People will only support regional projects with project costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It will take many years to see these large projects come to completion, but they will indeed help greater numbers of people. With WFP only dealing in mega projects we, as the AWWOA will not be able to through WFPC support our own small project.
As your Charitable Donations committee we recognize that you took a personal interest when you took on a small project you could call your own. Knowing this we looked for other agencies that could supply small projects in our field of endeavor. After a thorough investigation we feel The Water School using the SODIS technique could offer the AWWOA small school projects involving improved water quality. The impact of the SODIS process would not just help the school children but expand to help the families and the extended families. A school of 500 children could exponentionally expand to help approximately 1,500 children and adults. A small project like a children’s school supported by your charitable donations would more personally connect us to the people and community we are helping.
The SODIS process stands for solar disinfection system and provides sustainable water purification. The system combines health education and training in the use of the SODIS system. After a two week introduction of the SODIS (solar disinfection system) the community sees an immediate 80% reduction in water bourn disease. The SODIS system is effective 35 degrees either side of the equator. To give you an idea what area this covers; from the north of India south taking in the top two thirds of Australia, from Morocco in north Africa to within several hundred miles of the southern tip of Africa. I encourage you to look on The Water School’s web site to see the great impact they are making, their web site is: www.thewaterschool.org.
The World Health Organization endorses the SODIS system. Implementation occurs in partnership with organizations that have a local presence in the country. The reduction in sickness in turn reduces health costs and most importantly, provides an improved quality of life for everyone. The environment will be improved since the water will no longer need to be boiled thus saving the precious wood for cooking and reducing the chance that children will get burned in the process. Another spin off that has occurred; small village businesses have sprung up to market new plastic bottles and process the cast off bottles into building products. SODIS supplies each child with a SODIS table, a wood framed table with a shiny metal reflective surface attached to the top of the table. The child receives plastic bottles, two for each member of the family in which to put the contaminated water into. After leaving the plastic bottle in the sun on the reflective table for a minimum of six hours E. coli have been destroyed along with amoeba, bacteria and other harmful organisms.
We as your AWWOA Executive believe the SODIS system provides a safe and improved quality of water that would otherwise not be available to these children and their families.It is with a grateful heart we thank all our AWWOA members, Consultants and Suppliers for your generous donations for our 2010 Silent Auction and for your many bids on the gifts. Due wholly to your generosity you have raised approximately $15, 700 for our 2010 water project.
A breakdown of the activities at our 2010 AWWOA Seminar that contributed to the funds raised is:
| Monday guess jar, model and watch | $235.00 |
| Monday 50/50 draw | $720.00 |
| Tuesday 50/50 draw | $175.00 |
| Silent Auction | $4,087.00 |
| Silent Auction guess jar | $109.00 |
| AWWOA donation for Operator & Supplier registration | $10,380.00 |
| Thursday 50/50 draw | $119.00 |
| Grand Total | $15,825.00 |
The water project for 2010 your Charitable Donations Committee has chosen is the Ngong Primary School. This children’s school is located about forty minutes outside Nairobi close to the escarpment of the Rift Valley in Kenya. This school has 1425 children from both a rural and town background. Since water born disease continues to take the lives of these children we can only hope none have passed away since last we talked with The Water School and that your water SODIS project will start on time. This project will cost $12,000 and thanks to your generous donations, it will soon become a reality.
The children at the Ngong Primary School are a combination of Maasai and Kikuyu tribes. This project will benefit all the school children, teachers and their families and could possibly affect as many as 3,500 Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Mothers, Fathers and children. Just think, it just isn’t safe drinking water, but children’s lives will be saved. Instead of the young girls and their Mothers hauling contaminated water every day, Mothers will have more time to look after their families and the girls will now be able to attend school. This is all thanks to The Water School’s SODIS technology and our AWWOA member donations. I think we make a great partnership together.
All remaining funds over and above the $12,000 will go to Water For People 24 North Parganas India project. I should mention to our members your Charitable Donations Committee received a very nice letter of thanks from Water For People to all our members for their contribution to the India project. The India project is supplying safe drinking water and improved sanitation facilities and hygiene education for 335 communities.
Marie Curie lived from 1867 to 1934 and had great insight into the human condition and our responsibility not to just ourselves but to each other. A quote from Marie Curie; “you CANNOT HOPE to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be the most useful”.
I suggest to all those who helped raise funds for this Ngong water project; your generosity has not only improved your character, the image of your AWWOA, but you have aided humanity by improving their health, longevity and for more opportunities in life. Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of your Charitable Donations Committee and the commitments the AWWOA has made to help others less fortunate than ourselves.
Your Charitable Fundraising Committee Chairperson
Doug Thorson
UPDATE: May 25, 2010
from Fraser Edwards of the Water School
Ngong Township school
Student Population: 1700
Head teacher: Alex Langat
Located near a slum in Ngong area of Kenya’s Rift valley, Ngong township school faces a challenge from its large student population who come from the nearby slum. On a recent visit to his office, Mr. Langat showed us packets containing khat, an illegal popular drug in Kenya. Drug abuse and broken homes are just some of the vices the headmaster Mr. Langat has to deal with. On top of his administrative duties, he has to serve as a counselor for the students, “most of who have low self esteem.” If that were not enough, he also has to contend with the constant outbreaks of water borne diseases among the students, which lead to high absenteeism.
“Water was cut off a while back…” and so the students have to bring their own water to school and it is s usually very dirty. “We do not have a source of water and we don’t have enough water” he shares. “When you send the children to get water they run to the open pits around town and that’s the water they bring back; when you caution them against drinking it; they candidly inform you that that’s what they have been living on. The Water School program will be of great help to our students and the community around our school.” He hopes that through training by The Water School, the students will learn important elements of hygiene and sanitation and will apply the simple method of water purification. In return, they can take the learning home and teach their parents.
UPDATE: April 3, 2009
from Fraser Edwards of the Water School
Greetings from Uganda. I arrived on Tuesday after several days in Nairobi. At the moment, I am actually sitting in the Kampala airport waiting for my flight to Nairobi. I will be there for two nights to meet some donors coming from Asia. We will then come back to Uganda for a week.
Last Monday, I had the privilege of visiting the Ole Teppes school that AWWOA is sponsoring. The children were very excited as always when visitors come. They are Maasai children and the culture calls for children to come forward to men and women and lower their heads. You are expected to touch them on the top of the head as a blessing. We blessed a lot of children.
The project has started well. We viewed tables where the children’s bottles were set out. I called children forward at random and they were able to identify their bottles They bring the water from their homes or from water holes on the way to school. The bottles are placed on tables in the sun at the school and treated. They are ready by 1 pm. The sad things is that the area is in a famine situation and so a bottle of clean water is all the kids have for lunch. At least it is something. Nevertheless, the children were excited and lively as normal kids are, although somewhat undernourished. The parents are skeptical, but that is normal at this stage of the project. When they make the connection that their kids aren’t sick anymore, they start doing it themselves in the home.
We talked with the teachers and asked them about the impact of the project. Although I had met a couple of the teachers at a training session last year, there was a new headmaster and so a mostly new audience. The teachers reported that absenteeism has been greatly reduced and the children are performing much better at school. They attribute this mostly to the fact that kids are no longer susceptible to water born diseases that have plaqued them in the past.
Travelling with me were Myron Penner, the Directors of the projects in the area and a journalist. I will be coming home with several impact stories for you as written by the journalist. Of course, we also took many pictures. I am attaching a couple for you with this note. (I hope they get through as the internet connections are so bad that attachments sometimes get left behind!) All of the others will come with me and I will get them to you on a CD.
There is nothing like seeing these projects first hand.
Best regards,
Fraser
UPDATE: May 23, 2009
from Fraser Edwards of the Water School
Students of Ole Tepes School displaying their solar purified water
Give me water please!
It’s a Friday afternoon in a classroom in Maasailand, and students are laughing. They are not laughing over weekend plans or stories from previous night, they laughing while they work together on a Rays of Hope Project. Excited about the prospects of living life free of waterborne diseases.
Ole Tepes Primary School is one of the schools partnering with The Water School to train and create awareness among students and within the community about the need for clean water using the Solar Disinfection process known as SODIS. The school is situated 50 miles from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. It has a student population of 250 who daily walk barefoot for miles, in tattered uniforms braving the morning chill to get to school.
Denis Kimantu of Ole Tepes Primary School enjoys his Sodis water
Denis Kimantu is one such student. 9 years old, he walks 5 miles daily to attend school. Born into abject poverty, sometimes the only food he gets is lunch provided at the school. More often than not, he goes to bed on an empty stomach and “sometimes there is no breakfast, so I only take a little water”, he says.
Finding clean drinking water is not an easy task either. Maasailand (Mostly inhabited by the Maasai community) sits on a semi-arid expanse-hot, dry and dusty. There is only one water-well within a radius of about 3 miles, serving hundreds of people and thousands of cattle. Others rely on water vendors who bring water on animal drawn carts from far away distances and sell for profit. But given the levels of poverty here, the area residences cannot afford to boil or even filter their drinking water. Combined with poor sanitation; this contributes to the terrible death toll in Kenya from water related diseases such as cholera.
The Sodis project at Ole Tepes Primary School proves to be the best thing that ever happened in this area.
“Now every child has two bottles of solar disinfected water…we no longer worry about children dropping out of school due to waterborne diseases.” said the headmaster, Mr. Jackson Matanda “We have also invited parents and sensitized them on the importance of taking purified water, Sodis water for that matter”. Because we believe water is critical to nourishing and fostering life.
A Community Health Clinic is adjacent to the school and is attended by 10-15 patients on a daily basis-serving students and community at large. It now uses SODIS treated water in the school clinic to drink and dress patient’s wounds.”
In most parts of the world, especially in the west, water is taken for granted and often even wasted. “In Kenya, water is sometimes the only thing one takes for an entire day…it’s your meal for the day”,says Jacob Auma, Coordinator of the Project.