These images just arrived from Rajesh Shah, Director of Peer Water Exchange who met with our team in Sierra Leone last week. Since Rajesh isn't in the images I have to assume he took them. Thank you so much Rajesh.
This is the very first news I have received from our Bank-On-Rain team since they left Seattle over a week ago.
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......
What does glamour have to do with clean drinking water?
Katie Spotz was awarded A Women of the Year award by Glamour magazine in 2010 (one of ten awards) and if this is not enough, she raises funds for safe, clean drinking water through her endurance adventures and continually inspires us ……………
“My hope,” Katie says, “is to make people realize they’re capable of so much more than they think.”
Katie is an enduro-adventure athlete, and in her 23 years has achieved several firsts. She has already swum the entire length of the Allegheny River in New York and Pennsylvania (325 miles)
She ran solo and self-supported across the Mojave and Colorado Deserts (150 miles)
Mike Williamson, our Bank-On-Rain Founder and Director met Katie on the Big Ride Across America. Mike recalls “Katie had no bravado and never a complaint that I can recall about the record temperatures, horrendous headwinds, humidity, mosquitoes and oh yea, over 3000 miles on a bicycle seat. Most of the rest of us did our share of bitching. She is amazing.”
Most recently, Katie became the youngest person to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean from Senegal in Africa to Guyana in South America (3000 miles) Her incredible “Row for Water “ across the Atlantic Ocean was sponsored by Blue Planet Network, a non-profit organization funding sustainable safe drinking water projects around the world. She was able to raise over $100,000 in donations for Blue Planet Run with her Row for Water.
For more information check out her blog “Row for Water” and be sure and follow Katie on twitter @KatieSpotz and most important stay tuned for her next adventure.
All of us at Bank-On-Rain thank Katie for her inspiration and for sponsoring us as a member in Blue Planet’s Peer Water Exchange (PWX) network. PWX believes local, grassroots projects are the key to solving the global water crisis in rural and remote areas.
Katie did get me thinking about my own water use in a different way, and what I have to do to get it…… lucky me, it’s with the turn of the tap! So how can I really understand the hardships that many others have; to obtain safe water for drinking, for cooking, and irrigating what they grow for food? What if I had to walk over 5 miles a day to get all the water I needed to survive?
Call me somewhat crazy but I think if a group of us, each in our local communities showed what it was like to collect our own water from several miles away, and carry it in a bucket, every day for a week or a even month ….water awareness week…….would this result in promoting an awareness of what many people on our planet actually face every day?
Not many of us can row across an ocean, but maybe we can make a statement in a different way. Would you say this kind of ‘think global, act local’ action of a walk for water awareness week could catch on and grow? Could it go viral? Would it bring awareness of our own water use; how we get it and how much water we actually use? Way too much! Katie’s got me thinking that we are capable of so much more than we think…
Gemma Bulos founder of A Single Drop for safe Water asked: “How do you identify your communities and what criteria do you follow when engaging in partnerships with organizations and individuals?”
Caroline Di Diego (CASUDI) answered for Bank-On-Rain (BoR): ”So far ‘potential’ partners and one where we are further along then the realm of ‘potential’ have come to us. Our expertise is known in the community and word gets out; by community I might add this includes the social networking community. Our goal is not to grow large and become a significant entity ourselves, but to remain small and nimble, more along the line of a consulting entity to other water focused organizations; though as consultants we are doers and are very willing & able to pick up a spade and dig a trench onsite, in a remote location. By remaining nimble we can move faster and more effectively, and fill gaps for less nimble organizations.
Claire Rumpsa, Research Program Manager “East Africa for Aqua Clara International commented & asked: "Aqua Clara has just acquired a training center in a small village in a rural community in Kenya we plan to build a demonstration rain water harvesting system at the training center. As Rajesh has said, it will be great to BoR as a resource for consultation as organization such as Aqua Clara work to expand their programs. Partnering with other organizations (such as ourselves!) with established programs that already have networks on the ground could be a valuable way for BoR to have a great impact.
My question centers around the issue of rainwater as a source of safe drinking water. I agree that the rainwater is not as contaminated by fecal pathogens as ground and surface water sources, but in my experience of testing rainwater from various types of rainwater catchment systems in Kenya, it is still not of a quality that is safe to drink. I understand that the systems that we have tested are not as sophisticated either in design or in construction as the ones that BoR is talking about, but I think some sort of treatment after harvesting will always be necessary if the rainwater is to be stored for any significant length of time. One of the myths that we often have to counteract in Kenya is that rainwater is completely safe!”
Mike Williamson answered for BoR: “I totally agree that harvested rainwater may have some health concerns, but the point I was trying to make was that for a household existing on $1 per day, the relative merits of simple catchment make it far superior to using untreated surface water.
The simple act of storing water is shown to improve the quality with time. If there is low organic content, bacterial contamination falls dramatically as these bacterium die due to lack of nutrients and substrate on which to grow. Settlement of particulate matter in the water also "filters" it, as bacteria collect on surfaces and settle out of the water volume”
Below Mike checks out basic rain collection & storage system using recycled fish totes. This Bank-on-Rain solution can be flown into a remote airfield, and up to 12 totes stacked in a typical Mitsubishi-type pickup, and driven to the village.
Mike continues “Of course it would be preferred to have a filtering system if justified by cost and a system designed to serve a training center, school, community water system and the like may be able to support the small increase in unit cost. …….one of our primary missions is to address the alarming infant mortality attributed to dysentery caused by unsafe drinking water. If properly collected and stored, rainwater is relatively free of human pathogens responsible for much of the deaths during the first 3 years of a child’s life. Where justified by resources, we encourage better systems and as village economies improve, so might their water systems.”
Checkout this video of a typical Aqua Clara International training day in Kenya!
PWX is a participatory decision-making system to select, fund, manage, monitor, and share grassroots water and sanitation projects worldwide efficiently, effectively, and transparently. PWX believes local, grassroots projects are the key to solving the global water crisis in rural and remote areas; and this is exactly the reason BoR and PWX came together. And I should add that PWX recently won the INTEL 2010 Environment Award.
BoR is very excited about being a member of this established network and to partner with, learn from, and share our expertise in rainwater collection with other organizations. We are looking forward to assist in getting grassroots rain collection & storage technology implemented in areas that really need it. It will be most rewarding to collaborate with PWX partners already on the ground with field experience, and also will help establish needed connections and communication to facilitate BoR future projects.
A special thank you to Katie Spotz, Row For Water from all of us at Bank-On-Rain for sponsoring us.
Please feel free to add any comments or suggestions below. We love suggestions.
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