Giving…with strings attached. That’s controversial!  Shouldn’t a gift be given without strings attached; isn’t that the very nature of a “gift”?

When you just give things to people or communities in developing areas…. you might actually find it restricts their development. However, when they have to earn….. do something in return for a “gift”, it most often motivates people to “develop” and become sustainable.

“SAFE DRINKING WATER” is the gift Bank-On-Rain gives to communities in developing countries.

The most important thing we have learned from our recent trip to Africa is that the health and sanitation benefits of a clean drinking water source are quickly compromised if the populace does not first completely subscribe to C.L.T.S. This is what the Safer Future Youth Development Project team call “Community Led Total Sanitation”, and consists of sanitation education and ensuring that 100% of the households construct (and use) latrines with covers, in the entire village.

If a village does not reach the ODF (Open Defecation Free) standard, hand washing training and clean water at the schools will be defeated by spread of fecal-borne illness.

The strings attached are “SAFE SANITATION FIRST”.

We visited villages where the CLTS program had been implemented with 100% compliance (below) and the difference from other villages was very obvious (no flies or odor, village was clean of trash – a sign of pride of villagers for their homes/village and they were pleased to show off the latrines (above) they had built themselves from local materials).

“SAFE SANITATION FIRST”, and only AFTER a village has met all the criteria of Safer Future (or similar local organization) will Bank-On-Rain provide a safe, clean water source; these are the strings we attach to our “GIFT OF CLEAN WATER”.

The process of getting to the point of “SAFE SANITATION” for a village is long and very time consuming (often a year or more) with multiple follow up visits (often several visits a month) with an on the ground team, in this case the very dedicated guys from SF.  

I learned firsthand that this is why so many ‘water initiatives’, GIFTS of water, fail in Africa and elsewhere. It’s so much easier for a Non Profit to arrive (no prior planning) and dig a well (either by hand or mechanized drilling equipment), take happy pictures, and leave. No strings attached, no addressing the sanitation aspects, or follow up maintenance to insure sustainability.

Changing an entire village to embrace “SAFE SANITATION FIRST” is in fact a “social engineering” initiative, and requires committed leadership within the village community as well as the non profit. This is where Safer Future starts; by finding the influencers (and not necessarily the chief who is the appointed leader), but those who “light up” with a spark of obvious interest during the first village meetings

It appears you can recognize the “natural leader” pretty easily by that certain “fire” of interest in their eyes …… this first person in essence chooses him or herself to be the “natural leader” by being the first to show interest, and then being the first to actually construct a single household latrine. This process sets an example for the rest of the village by influencing and motivating others to do the same.

Safer Future enlists these “natural leaders” or influencers within villages to help train their neighbors, and takes them through a phased program, which can include Rainwater Harvesting as the gift or reward!

The initial education is critical in having the connection between sanitation practices (open defecation) leading to disease, and “safe sanitation” preserving a clean source of water. Remember many villages in remote areas still connect disease with bad magic!  It is nurturing the key influencers, which ends in the ultimate success, up to a year later, when an entire village has installed latrines and has earned the gift of  “CLEAN WATER SOURCE”.

If something is earned, or even a reward for a goal accomplished, there is far greater chance that it will be appreciated; both enjoyed and maintained. Bank-On-Rain does not leave planning ahead, or ongoing maintenance to chance, and has built in to every gift of water a follow up plan to insure its sustainability.

Because of the importance of the water system being part of the “Total Sanitation” mindset, Bank-On-Rain will approach projects working in partnership with Safer Future  or similar on the ground local organizations.

Education about collecting and storing rain (Rain Harvesting) can be crucial in areas like Sierra Leone, with average annual rainfall of more than 3 meters (more than double of what we have in rainy Seattle). Rainwater harvesting is a natural in Sierra Leone, but unfortunately many people have been indoctrinated by Government & NGOs that wells are a safer source of water. Bank-On-Rain educates the school or village that RAIN is a GIFT.

At The Barina Agricultural School the Principal was convinced that the water collected from the school roof (above) would be discolored and have metallic taste from the obvious rust on the roof. Even after we explained to him that the high volume of water washing over the roof prevents any significant contamination of rust particles from the roof; still the Principal was not convinced. We had to connect the dots…….so we set up one of the 950-liter recycled ‘fish totes’ we had sent ahead under the downspout, and it filled with rainwater during an overnight thunderstorm.  Clear, clean water. The principal was convinced. We wrote more about this in a previous post “ Water, Water Everywhere & Not a Drop to Drink”

To summarize, I can’t say it enough times; the importance of frequent follow-ups with the villagers to see the progress of everyone in the village embracing the individual house latrines.  When it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind and the project comes to a halt. The Safer Future representatives follow up with the village communities by making several monthly visits. This is social engineering; yes it is a change of behavior, and it can take a year or even more.

Bank-On-Rain has a hands-on understanding of the importance of addressing the sanitation issues before we install a Rain Harvesting System.  We understand that this is not a fast solution, often taking many months to a couple of years for a village to meet the safe sanitation standards.

We will be looking for similar alliances to the one we have with Safer Future to lead the way before we install more water systems in remote areas where sanitation practices would pollute and delete our efforts.

I can conclude after my personal experience in Africa that many water projects fail on account of being just a “GIFT OF WATER” with absolutely no strings attached….. the string of “SAFE SANITATION FIRST”.

The second point of failure is lack of education and follow up once the water system has been installed. But I’ll address that at length another time.

I am interested to hear about “water-related non-profits” who focus on “SAFE DRINKING WATER” in Africa and elsewhere, and understand the importance of “SAFE SANITATION FIRST”

Please contact me at  info@bank-on-rain.com or leave us a comment below!

Mike Williamson, Co-Founder & Director Bank-On-Rain
Designing a Green Planet One Raindrop at a Time.

Follow us on twitter @BANKONRAIN ~ Check us out on Google+ ~ Like us on Facebook.

Special thanks to my Co-Founder Caroline Di Diego (CASUDI) for collaboration on this post.

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Last September the Bank-On-Rain team installed a Rainwater Harvesting system at the Barina Agricultural school.  Eric Silverman, a Peace Corp volunteer (left, below) who is still in Sierra Leone sent Mike Williamson (Bank-On-Rain founder) a very important follow up email this week. 

Eric teaches at the School and has given us invaluable assistance and support (considerable) right from the prior planning stage of our project. Without follow up we would never know if all our planning and hard work continues to be effective; in this case a project to supply clean drinking water to a school of 300. 

Eric is like the Pied Piper, everywhere he goes the kids follow just to "hang" with him. His entourage accompanies him to the market, village, and everywhere, and there's usually a group at his house. The image below is typical.

Hi Mike,

Good to hear from you, I hope all is well. Things are pretty good here, just getting into the heart of the dry season and there is still water in the tanks. We've saved one tank for March so we'll see what  happens. Everyone is happy with the project, except for the chief,  who thinks I snubbed him in some way.

So there are no problems with the large system, except we'd like to put little boxes on the valves so we can lock them after school and at night because some kids have played around and left them open a few times. Other than that, there are no problems with the main system, so a job well done. It should hopefully last a long time.

With the demonstration systems, we've moved the one fish (tote) tank at the teachers' latrines back inside to the boys' latrines after the teachers realized they never use those latrines and people were playing around with the spigots or faucets. We could use a few extra of those spigots as a couple have been broken.

As for the small business project, that hasn't really developed yet, I think because of the costs of the materials and the idea of using bamboo is not that appealing to people. However, I think there is still hope for it because a number of the teachers still want to have it done at their houses and one of the buildings we are putting up for the new teachers. That leads to this current project, the teachers' quarters, which we are working on now making blocks, cutting trees for boards, and clearing the area. The project still needs about $800 on the website so if you know anyone who would want to support the  project, even for $10 or $25, donations can be made online HERE  

Thanks in advance, hope all is well. Send my greetings to the rest of the Bank-On-Rain team. Best Eric. 

The news about the faucets was not at all surprising and not unanticipated. Mike Williamson & Ken Blair (Bank-On-Rain Directors) have been designing, fabricating, and testing a new faucet design, specifically for use in developing countries with our rainwater systems. We hope to have some exciting news about our FullStop™ water faucet very soon.

Below Mike and Eric plan a small system using the 50 gallon food containers easily obtainable in Freetown, only a days drive away.

We are very fortunate to have Eric at the school, sending us updates.

Note the "garden" tools above, a donation from Seattle University Maintenance who gave Bank-On-Rain their discarded tools to ship with the tank plumbing supplies last August. Yes, God is Watching. And of course so is Eric!

Eric was hands on during the installation of the rainwater collection and storage systems installed at the school. And not only hands on but excellent at motivating the kids to do their part. Below, one of the volunteers carrying sand for the concrete pad under the tanks.

Eric has a two year teaching contract at the Barina School. Communication is difficult and often he is unable to get a cell signal for text messaging or there is no electricity to charge phones and computers. He catches up on emails when he can get to the nearest town some 3 hours away, usually once a month or so.

Eric is doing a great job for the community. Although only 24, he is considered one of the respected voices in the village and is consulted by the elders on many issues. Eric’s success in standing up to the Paramount Chief on the issue of the water system speaks volumes.

Oh yes; the Chief felt he should have received preference over the school's rainwater collection installations! We’ll build his the next time around along with the individual systems for the teachers in the village. We are very pleased how the idea of collecting this abundant resource (remember, 120 inches a year in SL) is catching on with the kids and especially the teachers.

On top of all of that,  April Boles, founder of pedalsforafrica, will be doing a detour to the school this week and will report back to us on her return to Seattle. Thank you April for all the support you have given Bank-On-Rain, and more to come on April's visit in another post.

Can you suggest any other ways to follow-up, or track the progress of your project in a developing part of the world?  

Comments or suggestions below please ~ email us at  info@bank-on-rain.com  ~ and check us out on Google+  please like us on Facebook  and follow us on twitter @BANKONRAIN

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I visited Sierra Leone last September with the Bank-On-Rain team and even though they have over 130" of rainfall each year, there is a severe shortage of water in Sierra Leone, especially clean drinking water!

Where I live near Seattle we have less than a quarter of the annual rainfall that Sierra Leone has, and I install professionally designed rain collection systems every day that supply families and commercial projects with more than enough clean water for drinking, living and working throughout the year.

The purpose of Bank-On-Rain’s visit to Africa was to install a rain harvesting system for the Barina Agricultural school in Makali (see above).However we also had the privilege of meeting Rajesh Shah founder of Peer Water Exchange (PWX) , a non-profit organization which consists of a conglomerate of over 80 smaller organizations.  PWX serves to fund and assess the impact of water and sanitation projects with the review process all implemented by their members.  

The founder of PWX, Rajesh, took us to a Barefoot College  about half a day from Freetown, which had a very expensive solar system donated by well known brand, with a large array of panels and battery bank( see below)

Looking around, I noticed a water tower near a building, but no gutters on the actual building. When I asked about this I was told that a water truck came regularly to pump water into the tank, which in itself was used to gravity feed the water to the facility. On further investigation I noticed there were no gutters on any of the metal roof buildings. Instead, there were cement ditches under the eve lines to divert the rainwater run off from the property.

Sometimes people just don’t connect the dots! The connection had not been made between the rainwater runoff and the storage tower a few feet away. An efficient sustainable water system could easily be implemented by installing gutters and plastic cisterns, available in Freetown several hours  away. This could have been a pretty sophisticated set up considering the electricity available through the solar system for pumping and filtering rainwater.

Sadly this opportunity has been missed so far, but I am hopeful in the future they will connect the dots and use Barefoot College as a teaching tool for rainwater harvesting as a sustainable water source. 

The principal of the Barina Agricultural school in Makali, where I supervised the installation of a 20,000 liter system for 300 students, also was unable to connect the dots. The principal, was extremely skeptical that their old rusty metal roofs would produce anything but rust colored undrinkable water too scant to fill their needs!

I had to think of something fast…….

…. a quick demonstration on how much water could be collected and how clean rainwater really can be. So I had my helpers drag the fish totes under the first gutter that local volunteers had installed on the building with the best roof.  We had a wonderful rain shower that night and in the morning the tote was full of the most pristine, pure water anyone had ever seen.

I filled my bottle and gulped down a whole liter. Big smiles came across the work group, while others filled bottles from the tote and drank as well.  A good demo has more worth than hours of lectures and government pamphlets. The principal of the school was now a true believer after only one night of rainwater collection!

My demo, and the installation of the system by the locals under Bank-On-Rain direction gives 300 students clean drinking water. While the students certainly learned valuable skills and information by seeing and helping to install the rainwater catchment system, these are three lessons I learned.

1.   When the locals build and contribute ~ they own the system. When the students create their own teaching materials they learn. Contribution = ownership.

2.   Sanitation education & practices  ~ without these in place first and being embraced continuously, the clean water supply can become contaminated.

3.   Small things, details, systems connect the dots ~ and we hope these dots stay connected in remote areas when students from the Barina Agricultural School return to their homes. We hope one of them will start a rain harvesting business using the 50gal plastic containers we saw for sale in Freetown. And yes, gutters made of bamboo. (see below) 

Below is the small demo we did, a usable demo which would we hope begin to connect the dots for the students & those from the village who helped us.

Bank on Rain continues to bring knowledge and acceptance of rainwater collection to developing areas, with the strong conviction that this practice of helping people help themselves, will supply clean drinking water to those who are in need.

Check out our posts Rainwater Harvesting Sierra Leone , When do students learn the fastest? and  Africa update 2 to find out more about the rainwater harvesting system we installed in Africa.

Comments or suggestions below please ~email us at  info@bank-on-rain.com  ~and check us out on Google+  please like us on Facebook  and follow us on twitter @BANKONRAIN

Ken Blair, Director of Bank-On-Rain

Building a Green planet one raindrop at a time.

KEN BLAIR is a professional rainwater systems designer and installer in the Northwest, United State. His successful company Rainbank evolved in 2006. He is a founding director of Bank-On-Rain and brings the “nuts & bolts” expertise to the Bank-On-Rain board. Ken can be reached at Ken@rainbank.info

The title of this post was inspired by “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” which was written by  English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge    

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The short answer is, when the students do the teaching J 

The students at the Barina Agricultural School in Sierra Leone loved showing their artistic skills and teaching themselves about healthy sanitation practices!

Wash your hands!

Last September Bank-On-Rain successfully installed a rain collection system for the 300 students at the school and along with this we wanted to educate everyone about the importance of hand washing.   

We created teaching aids before we left on our mission; however we had no idea how much the students would take to the idea of painting their own. What is more important the students followed their own instructions, and watched that their peers did the same There is no way a lecture or a government sanitation pamphlet would have had the same impact.

Sickness is everywhere………

Bank-On-rain wanted to get the message across that sickness most often came from poor sanitation…….not from bad magic.

Wash hands before eating… Sickness is everywhere

This message was painted on the door of the latrine…. For obvious reasons!

Wash sickness away……

Push button, put hands under water, shake hands in sun to dry, and do not leave the water running!

Seeing these students painting these instructions on the many buildings was definitely a highlight of my visit to Africa and of my summer internship with Bank-On-Rain.

Rub hands together……..

Shake hands in sun to dry………..

Wash hands, no sickness, long life!

I wish all the students and teachers at the Barina Agricultural School a long life……….and thank them for this fabulous opportunity of working with them.

 Emily Berg, Bank-On-Rain Researcher

Follow @Bankonrain on twitter, like us on facebook and check out on Google+

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I cannot think of a better way to describe Bank-On-Rain’s adventures in Sierra Leone than a persistent ongoing learning experience.

We arrived at the Sierra Leone airport the afternoon of September 4 and made our way to Freetown from the airport via ferry. Mohamed Sesa and Mohamed A. Sanko—two Safer Future Youth Development staff—greeted us at the ferry landing and drove us to their farm where we spent the night. More on the Safer Future Youth Development Fund, in an upcoming post; they are an amazing organization and in my opinion they have a very workable “plan” we can all learn from.

We awoke bright and early the next day to meet with Rajesh, the founder of Peer Water Exchange. Rajesh had a tour planned of several Safer Future projects. The first thing we learned about was C.L.T.S., or Community Led Total Sanitation. This is perhaps the most important learning experience I brought back from Africa. Before installing a well,  Safer Future ensures that each family has and uses a latrine before assisting them in acquiring a well. If Safer Future installs a well before everyone in the village has and uses a latrine, the well water will quickly become contaminated as a result of open defecation! Shocking but true….and maybe not so surprising when you consider that SL is the poorest country in the world. 

Once C.L.T.S. is in place Safer Future trains a small team of “well doctors” to construct and fix the well whenever required and this insures continuing maintenance.

After spending a few days visiting the projects Safer Future has been working on, we travelled to Makali accompanied by Mohamed Sesa, Mohamed A. Sanko, and Shaku Sesay (of Safer Future) in order to get going on the Bank-On-Rain, rainwater harvesting project for which we had come to Africa in the first place! We were overwhelmed with community support and involvement. Under the expert guidance of Ken Blair and Mike Williamson, the school teachers and students performed nearly 100% of the construction; they very pleased to show off their skills and improve the Barina Agricultural Secondary School.

For me, the highlight was painting the ‘teaching tools’ images we had prepared prior to our trip…..onto the school building and latrines with the students.

The images resonated with the students and they understood the message conveyed. Not to mention, they were all very proud of their own artwork!

The overall project was a great success. Under the guidance of Bank-On-Rain the teachers constructed a beautiful system with gutters and tanks purchased locally in Freetown, with donations to Bank-On-Rain.  

In addition together we installed small systems on both the student and teacher latrines for hand washing, more like systems that could be replicated outside the school for a single family. We used split bamboo from the nearby river for gutters and fish totes (we sent ahead as the packing crates for supplies) or blue tanks purchased on the streets in Freetown, for holding the water.

Has anyone had a similar experiences bringing, a clean water source to a school or village in Africa, if so we would love to hear from you?  Please leave a comment or email us at info@bank-on-rain.com.

Emily Berg for Bank-On-Rain
Follow us on twitter @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg
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Mike Williamson (extreme left), Emily Berg & Gail Williamson (in the middle) and Ken Blair (on the right). Mike,Gail and Ken are founding directors of Bank-On-Rain and Emily is our Bank-On-Rain very capable summer intern.

 

I particularly like this, as it shows Gail and Emily getting to know the women in the group. I cant wait to hear what they were taking about.

Check out some of our previous posts on our Posterous blog site to find out what Bank-on-Rain is doing in Sierra Leone this week......

 

Stay tuned for more updates soon...... Follow us on twitter @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg @CASUDI

Like us on facebook

Caroline Di Diego (CASUDI)

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When we arrive at the Barina Agricultural School in Malaki, Sierra Leone in a couple of weeks, we will have ‘teaching tools’ that communicate the importance of drinking clean water and washing hands. Teachers may understand the importance of hand washing, but do not encourage the practice in students, we are told. There will be a total of 10 images with short messages that teachers can use during lessons….. perhaps the students will re-draw and color their favorite image….. or come up with their own to share with the class.

Do you have any ideas that we didn’t think of? Have you seen any effective methods of encouraging students to wash their hands? We would love to hear from you! Leave a comment or email us at info@bank-on-rain.com.

Emily Berg for Bank-On-Rain
Follow us on twitter @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg
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The most important thing I have learned in my past few months with Bank-On-Rain is that the social engineering behind a project provides infinitely more obstacles than any of the mechanical or civil engineering challenges. Good data, planning, calculations, and material acquisition paired with experienced engineers like Ken Blair and Mike Williamson will ensure the success of a working rainwater catchment system, when we depart from the Barina Agricultural School in Malaki, Sierra Leone in Mid-September. 

Bank-On-Rain Directors Mike Williamson, Ken Blair and researcher Emily Berg (that’s me) making final plans for our trip to Africa next month. Note cats are excellent at social engineeering.

How do we know the students will not leave the water running? How do we know that kids will wash their hands after using the latrine? What happens when something breaks?

We do not know what will happen, but we can do a bit of social logistics planning….

Here is the set-up for the system at the Barina Agricultural School in Malaki, Sierra Leone.

Water will be collected from one building as just an inch of rain provides 3,000 liters of water (and Sierra Leone gets close to 10 feet—120 inches—of water each year!). This is amazing to me as Seattle only gets ~35 inches of water/year! The water will run through a series of PVC pipes to a drinking water station (also used for agriculture and cooking) and a hand washing station by the latrines.

We will be constructing the system with students and families at the school…… this is not an installation! It is a learning experience and community project! Teachers, students and the families will be involved in the construction or the rainwater catchment system, and we will show them and help them understand how it works. Our goal will be that when we leave they will be able to fix  & maintain with minimal help.

Caroline Di Diego (CASUDI) came up with the idea of SMS messaging for maintenance reminders. They all have cell phones in Malaki….. wouldn’t it be easy to send a scheduled message via SMS, “Report to the principal when you have cleaned the filter.” By the way, is anyone interested in working with us on this?

When you haven’t had a supply of water you don’t have the culture around hand washing that our schools in the US have. We will provide laminated signs for the classrooms and hand washing station. We plan to provide very short lesson tools for the teachers to educate students on the importance of hygiene. Will we have to educate the teachers first?

Note the absence of soap and towels here….

 When you have never had running water, you will probably not understand it is a limited resource. Maybe you will leave it running to see how long it runs? Mike is planning to install push button spigots and has another invention up his sleeve, to insure that students don’t forget or play with the water and are encouraged to conserve it.

We hope the students who will be involved in constructing the system will understand where their water comes from and that it is a limited resource.

Social engineering in this respect means the students need to be educated and influenced to make the necessary changes in their thought process to wash their hands, and turn off faucets!

We are confident we can combine education, some social engineering with a well engineered and workable 20,000-liter rain collection system for the Barina Agricultural School. Stay tuned for our updates.

Do you have any suggestions for us? Is there something that we didn’t think of? We would love to hear from you! Please leave a comment or email us at info@bank-on-rain.com!

Emily Berg for Bank-On-Rain
Follow us on twitter @EmilyBerg @BANKONRAIN
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Foreign aid alliances have left a lot of “stuff” in Haiti and around the world, but can some of it actually be re-purposed and save lives? What about those big yellow waxed canvas water bladders that are nothing more than trash once the Oxfam relief water trucks no longer deliver water?

What If one bladder was used for catching the rain, as a rain basin or substitute roof and what if a second bladder were to be used to store the water collected? Would we have created a “grassroots” rain collection system, which would provide clean water and sustain a number of individuals currently without any access to water? If the recipients of the water had the incentive, would they trade their clean water for agricultural or other goods and expand their reach?

My next focus was to check with Patrick Cummings for “on the ground” intelligence, as Patrick is a Director of WWP and just returned from an extensive fact finding mission in Haiti. I also consulted with Ken Blair, our nuts and bolts guy and Director at Bank-On-Rain.

Patrick said it looked like a feasible idea but all the people in Haiti would need is the motivation—a leader on the ground, to put this plan into action as well as someone who is willing to maintain it. This is the tricky part, he said…. the people in Haiti have seen people come and go trying to offer ‘help’ and most often failing to do so. Has copious foreign aid destroyed any internal impetus to construct such a system? Would it take someone dedicated like Patrick; with an understanding of the people and culture in Haiti in various locations who were already trying to make a go of it, coupled with his engineering background to actually make the rain collection systems into a reality?

To get started use the sand bags (if you find them with a bladder) as the perimeter/wall or dig a depression in the ground to hold one of the two water bladders in place when full. This will become the storage for the water collected by a tarp or roof made from the second bladder. The bladder that collects rain (suspended above the storage bladder) should be supported with steaks as one would support a tent. It appears that just about all the connections that will be required to make a working system can be found on two water bladders; except for a screen to act as a filter for the incoming water to the storage bladder and possibly some rubber glue and material to plug any holes.

Note that if the logistics of moving a second bladder is too inefficient, an ordinary tarp could be used in a similar way to catch the water. 

Bank-On-Rain will be testing this and writing up a simple instruction sheet for use in the field.

In my opinion this shift in thinking of repurposing materials ‘dumped’ all over Haiti—turning ”trash” to “treasure” could save lives and bring about an empowering social movement. How can we encourage and nurture the thought process that moves toward sustainable solutions like this?  Would Oxfam help us find all the bladders in Haiti, and the rest of the world that they alone have used in relief situations like this? Do Oxfam have records with the GPS coordinates of all these “bladder” treasures so one by one we can track them down and work with the local people to solve a little bit of the global water crisis, one water bladder at a time!

If you have any questions for Patrick feel free to email him at Patrick@worldwaterpartners.org or any questions for Ken at ken@rainbank.info.

Have you ever seen people make “trash” useful? Please leave a comment below or email us at info@bank-on-rain.com. We would love to hear your stories or ideas! And don’t forget to check out my post Is there a recipe for SUCCESS in Haiti?

Special thanks to Caroline Di Diego (@CASUDI), Ken Blair, and Patrick Cummings for their help in this post!

Emily Berg for Bank-On-Rain
Follow us on twitter @EmilyBerg @BANKONRAIN

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Haiti “is positively carpeted with well-meaning but clueless do-gooders. Haitians are pretty accustomed to this, so they have very low expectations.” This is a quote from an email I received from Sara, the mother of a good friend of mine, who lived and worked in Haiti in the mid 1980s with a health development group working primarily in tuberculosis control and vaccinations. 

“85% of all foreign aid projects I saw in Haiti failed after the NGO or Christian group left,” Patrick Cummings, the director of World Water Partners told me after his trip to Haiti.

I keep hearing this. In order to find out if it’s true I did some research and read Travesty In Haiti, Timothy T. Schwartz Ph.D.’s account of his 10 years in Haiti seeing the failures of Christian missions, NGOs, and food aid.

This is the first photo that Patrick Cummings took after getting off the plane in Port-Au-Prince.

The message is clear. What is going wrong here as Haiti has been receiving foreign aid since the 1950s?

After reading Travesty in Haiti, my understanding is that the American Plan lead to the quick downhill spiral of the entire country. “Until the 1980s, Haiti was almost entirely self-sufficient in rice consumption.” However, “food assistance to Haiti tripled during the 1980s reaching a yearly average of over $50 million in gratuitous U.S. surplus, beans, corn, rice, and cracked wheat… Enough to meet the calorific needs of over 15 percent of the Haitian population.” Why purchase food from a local farmer if you can get it from the U.S. for free? The U.S. managed to destroy rice, sugar, coffee, cacao, sisal, essential oils, and cotton industries and exports by the 1990s. Haitian government was brought into cooperation destroying the livelihoods of farmers and pushing them into urban factories supported by the U.S. (Travesty in Haiti, p. 109-113). I cannot help but wonder if Haiti would have gotten up on their feet if the U.S. had never intervened.

I have come to the conclusion that anything that does not help people help themselves is useless!

Sara told me, Haiti “looks the same now as it did then (26 years ago): countless uncoordinated agencies doing whatever feels good to them.” During Sara’s time in Haiti, her organization began looking towards getting clean water for a village in a town called Saltadere. It was clear that the community desired a road to the next town 8 miles away more than they desired water. Because “there was no source of clean water for miles and high levels of mortality and morbidity from water-bourne critters,” the organization decided water was what they needed most.

How can a village without any economic development—no source of agricultural income or trade—possibly maintain a clean water source that was given to them? The maintenance requires economic development and incentive!

As a relief effort after the earthquake in Port Au Prince, Oxfam delivered water bladders throughout the country and pumped them full of water via Oxfam delivery trucks. About a year and a half later, this is what most 10,000 liter bladders look like…….

As a result of copious misdirected foreign aid and lack of government involvement, the most sustainable business has become thievery. Would these solar powered panels have continued to function had they been rooted in the ground?

The foresight and reliance by the more affluent on these solar powered panels brings about an interesting point. What If foreign aid had been targeted in Haiti to create sustainable businesses (rather than handouts) to those in the middle or even upper economic ladder……. would the benefits have trickled down to those who need it most? Or would the more affluent class in Haiti, have still been inclined to keep it all for themselves?

Is Haiti so different to Cambodia where Eugene Nelson provides wells--see our post 1 Man, 26 Wells (and counting...)--to those who already have a bit of land, who have the incentive to start a sustainable business and are willing to share the water with neighboring less fortunate families. This incentive insures maintenance of the wells, so that those on different economic levels all can benefit.

I have been conversing with Olivia Jeanne, a Forest Resources student studying at Clemson University who is currently working in Ayiti, Haiti. In a message she said, “A LOT of times it just comes down to not really getting to know the people and their situation, it takes TIME to work with them through honest open communication and planning.” Is this the new direction? 

Olivia has been working in small gardens in Ayiti.

 Olivia told me something she learned from her boss, Gabrielle Vincent, at Sonje Ayiti: “Investing in finding out who and what resources a community already has is key, taking time to meet everyone and give people a chance to express themselves. Are there school students interested in engineering/science/technology? Unemployed college graduates? Their inclusion produces goodwill and as many educational opportunities as humanly possible...”

Olivia’s work brings Eugene Nelson to mind again. Here are single individuals who are committed to, love, and understand a culture and its people and have the capacity to create a large impact.

We can learn 3 important lessons from both of them:

1. Do not ‘dump’ your project in a random location. Invest time and energy into research of the people, culture, and prominent needs of a community.
2. Create something sustainable. Think grassroots! Before constructing anything, think about how it will be maintained by the people living there.
3. Changing a local economy instead of enhancing it is a recipe for failure. Support the desired life-style of a group of people; do not destroy it.

Please leave us any comments or personal stories you have to share or send us an email at info@bank-on-rain.com. We would love to hear from you and learn something new!

If you would like to contact Patrick Cummings with questions or ideas feel free to email him at Patrick@worldwaterpartners.org.

Emily Berg for Bank-On-Rain
Follow us on twitter @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg

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These fish totes (no longer needed by our local fisheries) will be repurposed for rainwater collection at the school or a family home in Sierra Leone. In the interim they make ideal shipping containers.

 Here is the list of the shipped goods. If you want to know more about why “God is Watching,” see our last post!

I am hoping that when I arrive at the Barina Agricultural School in August, students will be reading the books, using the gardening tools, and Bank-On-Rain will have the items and tools necessary to install the rainwater harvesting system. I am looking forward to show students how they can take repurposed containers, just like the fish totes and use them for collecting rain during the dry season.  

If you have any books or tools that you would like to personally ship, email us at info@bank-on-rain.com for suggestions on how to go about this!

Emily Berg for Bank-On-Rain

Follow us on twitter @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg

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In a culture where things tend to disappear whenever you aren’t looking, how can you ensure that shipped items will make it safely to a small village in Africa? Bank-On-Rain is planning to install a rain collection system in August for the Barina Agricultural School in Makali and those items not being sourced in Sierra Leone, will be sent ahead. Will everything arrive in tact if God is Watching?

The Barina Agricultural School in Makali has no clean water; the well is broken and pumping dirty water. The school’s library books were burnt in the war in 1994 and never replaced! Though it is an agricultural school there is no funding for gardening tools to train the students, and the tool shed has been left partially destroyed from the war. When we heard their story Bank-On-Rain decided to build a rainwater collection system for the school, which will supply clean drinking water to 291 students and about 10 local families.

Building without any tools?

 Bank-On-Rain has engineered a system, which will be collecting rain from two adjacent buildings, with the overflow going to the garden. There will be a minimum of two 5000-liter tanks sourced locally (~100 miles away in Freetown, the capital) providing 4-5 liters of water per day for each student. The dry season is between November and May and the water will be used primarily for drinking and hand washing. Sourcing locally has its own problems—Mike Williamson, Bank-On-Rain founder, has been working hard to obtain information on size, cost, and delivery service of Milla-Tanks (a business in Freetown) to Malaki to insure that everything we need sourced locally will be there when the Bank-On-rain team arrives for the installation in August. The faucets, smaller fittings required and hand tools needed for the installation by our team will be shipped; hand tools because there is no available electricity for installation. How can we be sure the containers with all these items will not be held in customs…. stolen…. or mislaid….? God is Watching.

How did we find the Barina Agricultural School?  April Boles, founder of Pedals for Africa, and Eric Silverman, a Peace Corps volunteer and teacher at the Barina Agricultural School, who met while April was on a Pedals for Africa trip in Sierra Leone, both told us about this very dire situation.  Eric has helped us get our project off the ground, providing us with the local knowledge necessary to socially and mechanically engineer the rainwater harvesting system.  This included permission by the school and local authorities for Bank-On-Rain to contribute their expertise and to build the actual system. Permission like this is very important in insuring the ultimate success in developing areas.

Eric knows the history of the Barina Agricultural School, is well familiar with all teachers and students, and understands what the school needs in order to improve the quality of education they are providing. When we heard about the burned library and the lack of tools from Eric we decided to collect and ship books and garden tools (no handles) in a Fish tote along with what Bank-On-Rain needs for the installation. The fish tote shipping container can also be used for collecting rain!

These are standard off-the-shelf “fish totes” used in the fisheries industry which can be repurposed for rain collection and storage with minimum plumbing. They also make ideal shipping containers.

We are partnering with Pedals for Africa—a non-profit that brings bicycles to Africa to allow for better educational, healthcare, and employment opportunities. Bank-On-Rain will learn about working in Sierra Leone from Pedals for Africa and we will help each other out with logistics—obtaining materials, transporting ourselves, etc.

Our Bank-on-Rain team in Malaki, Seirra Leone is going to install a system that will provide the agricultural school with a source of clean water as well as a sustainable example of how to gain their own access to water. We will engage the students and community with the construction of the rainwater harvesting system. Such a project is extremely important as obtaining water to maintain a small plot of land can provide a family with water and support a small business during the dry season. This is a learning experience, which can be helpful to many students at the Barina Agricultural School in the future.

The students still have no books……. we are sending a donations of books; thank you Lopez Island Community Library.

We are including gardening tools; thanks to a very generous donation from The Seattle University Grounds Department. The 15 donated hand tools are headed to the Barina Agricultural Secondary School, which will allow students to learn how to maintain a small farm or garden.

We are very optimistic that anyone who comes in contact with Bank-On-Rain shipments to the Barina Agricultural School will respect God, and the educational materials related to rain collection, agricultural use, and school learning inside our shipping containers will all arrive safely!! God is Watching!

Please leave us any comments on resources for books and garden tools and anyone you think might be interested in sending these extremely important and necessary items. Perhaps an elementary school needs to dispose of some old textbooks? Do you know of any garden clubs with spare tools?

The logistics of shipping to Africa are complex (approved logistics company required) and expensive…… so we are looking for any suggestions on how to ship to SL in a cost effective way…….. does anyone have a small amount of available space in a container already headed to the area?

Comments below or email us at info@Bank-On-Rain.com. We appreciate every bit of help we receive.

Emily Berg for Bank-On-Rain

Follow us on twitter @EmilyBerg @BANKONRAIN

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Eugene Nelson, succeeds where many non-profit organizations many times larger fail. Eugene is an electrical engineer at Intel and he gets one month off every year during which he travels to a small village in Cambodia where he installs wells and dramatically improves the quality of life for the village residents. He founded a non-profit, Blue Heart Charity and has installed 26 sustainable wells, solving the problem of contaminated drinking water for many. 

This is a typical water source ……

I met Eugene last week for the first time, and it was clear that his success was based on an understanding that there is much more to just digging the wells themselves! These were some of the things I took away from our meeting: 

Eugene pointed out that there are a lot of different ways to help people but that he wanted to make sure that he was taking the smallest amount of money and making the largest amount of impact. He decided to do this by working towards a sustainable solution to the water crisis in a village in Cambodia with hand-pumped water wells.

I think his success comes from his focus on one village, rather than becoming fragmented and building wells in multiple areas.  For four years now, he has returned to the same village and has managed to build twenty-six wells; only couple with minor fixable issues. His tour guide and friend in Cambodia helps to maintain the wells while Eugene is away and when Eugene returns he compensates his guide for gas and labor. This is key—having a person on the ground in the area who can make sure that the wells continue to function between Eugene’s visits; the working relationship with his guide has now become a deep friendship.

Whenever you go into a developing area, it is important to know the territory and by focusing on the same village year after year, Eugene is very familiar with the resources and of course the people. On each trip, Eugene selectively chooses the well sites for the next year. He has conversations with the people who live there—he inquires if they have some land and are planning on growing food or crops (to sell in town and provide sustenance for their family)…… he looks for concentrations of women and children and makes sure there is a willingness to share the water source with others in the area. He looks for people often in remote areas who slip through the cracks because they are the ones who need help the most!

The girl in the grey-stripped shirt is 13-years-old and responsible for all the little kids you see around her. Eugene told me, “She doesn’t smile much… I feel bad for her being so young and having so much responsibility. You know, I think this was the first time I saw her smile that whole time……”

Another important point Eugene made was that those who donate to Blue heart Charity, for building wells in Cambodia really want to experience a bit of the accomplishment themselves. They want to see the happiness and improved life-style that Blue Heart Charity’s wells create for people. Donors don’t just want to see money disappear from their account, so Eugene puts the Blue Heart Charity logo on each well with a cookie cutter and the name of the benefactor. He takes pictures of each well installation, and sends the picture to the donor so they can catch a glimpse of the impact that their contribution has brought the people in the village.

Sustainable solutions that counteract water contamination and scarcity in developing areas are a Bank-On-Rain priority.

So, the experience that Eugene told me of really hit home. He built two wells for a man who every day hand irrigated two acres of eight-foot tall green beans (without a well). One well was for community access and the other he connected to a mechanized pump to irrigate the crops. The next year Eugene returned and this same man had two more acres of land with beans, cucumber, tomatoes, and jackfruit! The man’s house had a “bit more substance… some thicker walls”……..   Sustainable business = improved quality of life.

Buying local materials supports business in Cambodia, and Eugene sources 100% of the product needs for the wells locally.  He has cut the cost of building a well by 2/3—going from $600 to $200 per well—buying materials in bulk, developing relationships, and buying what he knows he needs. “It’s efficient; it’s not large,” he said, and having done it several times before I can see he knows what risks are involved and how to plan around them rather than spending hours on redundancy plans. Learn to do it and do it well and empower the people to do it in the future. I truly believe Eugene meets these criteria.

Some of the Blue Heart Charity wells serve 100 people and some only serve 12 but no matter how many, the wells have brought people together. “I’ve seen walls come down between neighbors; neighbors moving closer together to use and share responsibility for maintaining the well,” Eugene said.

Eugene has truly become a part of the community. The community loves him and he loves them right back.

On his last night there the community got drums out and started playing music; one little girl just got up on his lap and started eating the food off his plate. Eugene not only brought the village clean water, but also happiness. Eugene spends one hour each day working on Blue Heart Charity related projects. “I have kids and around nine o’clock the house starts to get kind of quiet,” he said. “I use the hour that I used to spend watching TV, planning and fundraising, and sending a few emails. You know, just doing little things like this to keep the motivation going.”

It was a real life privilege to meet Eugene and hear the how and why his wells continue to function, sustain and improve the quality of life of all those he touches in Cambodia.

Do you have any success stories like this one? Real people with real solutions related to water…. We’d love to hear about them in comments below or email at info@bank-on-rain.com

Emily Berg for Bank-On-Rain
Special thanks to my Bank-On-Rain mentor CASUDI for her help with this post.

Follow us on twitter @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg @CASUDI

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Here in the US, we most often use plastic tanks or ‘heavy-duty’ metal tanks with a strong plastic membrane interior, for our rainwater storage. But what happens in remote areas when we either can’t bring or don’t have these plastic or metal tanks? Where do we go then?

My two favorite rain storage solutions (cisterns) are rammed earth tires…

To prepare the site for the cistern, remove the top inch or two of soil, pour a slab of concrete for the foundation (steel reinforcing bars will improve structural stability if you have them), lay the rammed earth tires on the concrete slab, and cover the tires with a layer of water-tight concrete. Is the process labor intensive? YES!  And if you can obtain all the materials, well worth the trouble.

and ferrocement…

Structures made out of both rammed earth tires  & ferrocement have high load bearing capacity and equivalent or better structural stability than traditional building materials provide. Despite being very thin, ferrocement bends rather than fractures under compression tests and withstands earthquakes and other natural disasters with ease.  

 These are very cool ideas and as far as I have researched not nearly implemented often enough.

If you are traveling in remote areas of Africa, or anywhere else for that matter, you have to be willing to think creatively and invent solutions with the materials that you have access to. Maybe we won’t use rammed earth tires or ferrocement, because it takes supervision (education) and a skill set not often found in many remote areas, but we must keep an open mind and be ready to try new and different things and always try to design rainwater storage solutions to the available local resource.

 When you arrive in a new remote developing area, one you have never visited before what are the first three things you need to understand before considering rain collection and storage?

1.   You need to determine the annual rainfall of the area and when the rainy seasons are. For example if it rains from January-March and July- September, this leaves two dry seasons of around three months every year. Whether you are focusing on a community or individual family you now know you will need storage for 90 days, and you can estimate usage of either focus…. You will find water usage per person in the developing world is quite a bit less than in our wasteful west.

2.   After you have determined how much water is needed, the next step is to figure out a location to collect the rain run-off. Does the school have a metal roof, or any other material suitable for rain collection? What are the local roofs made of? Do you need to build a new structure with a shed roof to accommodate the rainfall collection?

It’s all very well to set out to collect the water but if all the roofs in the area are made of thatch, what then?

3.   The third thing you need to address is how to store the water. You have rainfall, you have roofs, you know how long it has to be stored based on usage. So, what are you going to store the rain in?

This is where understanding the local culture pays off. You need to research what building materials locals use and what local industries exist. Are there local businesses dealing in commercial products that could be repurposed for water storage? Is there a UN  (or similar) presence that could provide their cast-off blue 50-gallon food containers in which they receive their supplies?

This third part could lead to a local sustainable business that provides products or services related to water collection and storage within the community.

If we were to be very lucky we might find someone hoarding piles of used tires hoping that one day he or she might find something useful to do with them ~ we should be so lucky!

Please let me know if I have missed anything important in my list above, related to getting started in developing areas installing rain collection systems? Please leave a comment below or email us at info@bank-on-rain.com

Emily Berg and Caroline Di Diego for Bank-On-Rain

Follow us on twitter: @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg @CASUDI

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On June 10, 2011 Katie and Sam were training, gearing up to ride for their lives for safe drinking water, when Katie cruising at 25 mph took a crash on the Santa Cruz Mountains. She got up thinking she had nothing but a bruise and a scratch only to find walking was terribly painful. After gaining courage and strength to visit the doctor, Katie found out that she had fractured her pelvis in several places. She believes that people can do more than they think they can do, so of course Katie was not out of the race. She reflects, “there are countless people out there who see every challenge as opportunities in disguise, and I want to be one of those people.” Bravo, Katie!

“If you focus on the problem, you’ll see the problem. If you focus on the solution, you’ll find a way” Katie says and with just 36 hours left before the 3,000-mile race starting on June 18, Katie decides to learn how to ride a bike again with the help of cycling partner, Sam Williams. How can someone ride a bicycle with a fractured pelvis? I had only heard of her fiery passion from Mike Williamson, Director of Bank-On-Rain, who rode across the country with her in 2006, and I must say I really doubted her ability to ride a bicycle with a broken pelvis!  However I had neglected the possibility of a hand cycle!

As Katie begins her journey, she certainly does not feel alone with Sam, other competing cyclists, her quirky crew, and an abundance of support from followers. Two days into the race, Katie finds that her biggest impediment is not sleep deprivation or fatigue, but rather her fractured pelvis. One week ago, Katie says her “idea of a challenge was cycling a 5,000-ft climb. This week? A flight of stairs.”

But she collects strength and continues on her journey…

“Pedal and pedal and pedal—until you want to cry,” says Sam. After taking a crash on her hand bike, hops back on her beautiful Renovo bicycle to finish the race (with a doctor’s consent). It seems that nothing could stop Katie!

Katie’s passion is clear in her actions and words. “It’s not where we get in life that defines us – it’s what we overcome along the way that truly matters,” she says. Her excitement and willingness to challenge both her physical and mental stamina are tributes to her commitment to a cause—clean water for all. Katie reminds us to put intention into our unthinking actions and consider not just our momentary struggles, but a sense of what we can learn or gain from our experiences. We are encouraged to think of ourselves as individuals that are part of a community within a world that is greater and more troubled than we might be. Bank-On-Rain, supports and thanks you, Katie.

Katie and Sam and their unsung crew of heroes finished with the remarkable time of 7 days 16 hours and 59 minutes, which would have broken the original 2-person record that Sam and Katie set out to beat. This is an extraordinary accomplishment without Katie’s injury and absolutely amazing under the circumstances. Despite not breaking their record time, Katie and Sam have accomplished something quite unique. We might say that they set a new record managing to throw together a 4-person team at the last minute; and with one team member on a hand bike for the majority of the race due to fractured pelvis and a crash along the way! Unfortunately there is no category for this sort of effort, but you are first place in Bank-On-Rain’s books, Team Ride for Your Lives!

Follow Katie’s journey with Sam at rideforyoulives and please check our other posts on Katie Spotz “Glamour is not Enough” and “Ride for their Lives.”

Emily Berg, Social Media Intern at Bank-On-Rain
Designing a Green Planet One Raindrop at a Time.

Follow us on twitter: @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg

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What if we copy or mimic nature, can we gain valuable information on collecting and storing water?

That’s what Biomimicry is……. copying nature, and in our case solving a problem related to water, a diminishing resource.

Look at plants—succulents in particular. Succulents have adapted to extremely arid climates via water storage in their leaves, stems and roots. Not unlike our ideas at Bank-On-Rain of storing rainwater for future use. We are ‘mimicking’ a biological system.

If we understand Biomimicry, and create technologies that “mimic” biological systems, I believe we can improve human efficiency related to the use of resources and in addition we begin to function more like our natural surroundings. Mother nature has it all figured out—she recycles everything and adapts to the most extreme conditions. We need to ask ourselves, “What can we learn from nature in order to fit in to our surrounding ecosystems?”

If we as humans functioned as nature does, would we not become more sustainable? Of course we would, and we would use resources provided by our natural environment in a cyclical rather than linear fashion. This is a key concept. Nature works in cycles, while our economy, our industry, our consumption, and our pollution of the natural environment works in a linear way, and unfortunately, all of these linear activities are proliferating with time.

So how can we work to design a greener planet? What can we find in Nature to inspire us?

The Stenocara beetle obtains drinking water directly from its surroundings—fog in the extremely dry Namib Desert. An array of hydrophilic (water loving) bumps covers the Stenocara’s back and are surrounded by a superhydrophobic (very afraid of water) surface. The beetle tilts its wings back into the fog, tiny droplets move from the hydrophobic to the hydrophilic bumps, and once the droplets are large enough, they slide into the beetle’s mouth. Crafty, huh?

What are we doing at Bank-On-Rain to become more like our natural surrounding systems? We are cyclic, just as nature. We are supporting local business in developing countries, and especially those that use recycled resources as products for our systems. We are storing what nature provides us and using it appropriately for our needs. We are a non-profit organization supporting a cyclical economy—growing slowly and adapting to what comes, just as nature does.

This post was inspired by a #futrchat discussion on twitter hosted by @Urbanverse and a group of fun futurists. #futrchat was one of the first online chats I visited and I strongly recommend this monthly chat.

If you have any comments or suggestions of what we could or should be mimicking in nature, please leave a comment below or email us at info@Bank-On-Rain.com

Emily Berg, Social Media Intern at Bank-On-Rain
Designing a Green Planet One Raindrop at a Time.

Follow us on twitter: @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg

Photo Credit (Stenocara beetle): JochenB

Sources:
Dorrer, C. and Rühe, J.. “Mimicking the Stenocara Beetle—Dewetting of Drops from a Patterned Superhydrophobic Surface.” Langmuir 2008, 24, 6154-6158.

Garrod, R., Harris, L., Schofield, W., McGettrick, J., Ward, L., Teare, D., Badyal, J.. “Mimicking a Stenocara Beetle’s Back for Microcondensation Using Plasmachemical Patterned Superhydrophobic—Superhydrphilic Surfaces.” Langmuir 2007, 23, 689-693.

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The answer is yes, but why? In my recent interview with Dr. Thompson, founder of World Water Partners (WWP) he said “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing. We are not working together and we don’t have time to redo what has already been done and If we don’t start communicating with each other soon, we will end up over our heads in work and need for resources.”

Dr. Thompson told me of his goals and motivations for founding WWP, a non-profit humanitarian organization devoted to creating access to clean drinking water for all. WWP aims to create connections between other non-profits working toward the same goal—sustainable and appropriate solutions to our current water crisis. Bank-On-Rain is very pleased to be a member of WWP.

Dr. Thompson believes that we can use Haiti, a very small and very poor country only 700 miles away from Florida as a model for clean water access. “If we can show people one small example of a workable method for obtaining clean water that works, they will start to listen.”

And we will see the progress…

1. Identify medical clinics in Haiti
2. Set up the medical clinics with water treatment systems
3. Generate $2-3 to maintain the system each day

WWP understands the need to focus on small business within the country of Haiti and is looking toward Haiti Tech, a vocational and educational school, to import materials needed for the filter systems. When you facilitate a sustainable business in the overall plan it increases incentives for success.

With the support of Rotary International and a good dose of philanthropy, Dr. Thompson said “we can provide 200 health clinics with clean water access in the poorest place in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti.”

Here I am on April 11, 2011, along with Patrick Cummings (WWP director) and several other Seattle University students, pressure testing three water filter systems with local high school students to be shipped off to Haiti.

At the same time, one of these systems was being installed in a health clinic in Haiti…

The systems work through three basic steps: an ultra filtration compartment (0.02 microns) that filters out bacteria and viruses, a UV disinfection compartment (just a UV light bulb without the coating), and a small shot of chlorine if the water is for storage and not immediate use.

Dr. Thompson emphasized, “we need start to connect with people—information share, research share, and project share” He doesn’t want to still be talking about getting people clean water 30 years from now and the only way he can work to make that happen is to form partnerships with others having the same goal. In order to convert dreams to reality, we need to find and work with others to create sustainable solutions for those who need clean water most.

Do you have any ideas? Please email us at info@Bank-On-Rain.com or please leave a comment or suggestion below. We love comments and suggestions.

Emily Berg, Social Media Intern at Bank-On-Rain
Designing a Green Planet One Raindrop at a Time.

Follow us on twitter: @BANKONRAIN @EmilyBerg

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