Wonderland or Not

Des­pite my uncha­llen­ged matu­rity I’m a 20 something, and con­se­quently a mem­ber of 20 Something blog­gers. 20 Something Blog­gers has tea­med up with Hand­sIn to raise $5,000, the cost of a well or the cost to res­tore a well, for Cha­rity Water.

I know my cyni­cal friends are going to be clic­king off about now, but please bear with me. Though their site, lin­ked at the bot­tom of the page so don’t get impa­tient, looks all “I’m a hips­ter, pop cul­ture, flash in the pan acti­vist, out to save the world this week, on to something else the next”, don’t let the fact that the guy has made spec­ta­cu­lar use of social media and cyber tech­no­logy deter your cyni­cal selves.

“Cha­rity Water” digs fresh­wa­ter wells, rain­wa­ter catch­ments and sand fil­ters, or res­to­res older wells. That they show it off in a flashy for­mat might be a turn-off to some, giving the illu­sion that they aren’t serious, more flash than anything else. Be wary though, as we go for­ward even the most via­ble of pro­jects will have a pretty lively cyber facade, and it is not likely you’ll be able to judge a cha­rity base­less just because they are more media and inter­net savy then the rest.

I was loo­king for some indi­ca­tion of com­prehen­sive forethought about after­care. What I found was that Cha­rity Water and part­ners have imple­men­ted, and this is sig­ni­fi­cant, a pro­gram to main­tain the wells. As many of you know something that makes peo­ple wary of dona­ting to pro­jects such as this, and rightly so, is the fact that many of the pro­jects out there lack of a pro­gram to sus­tain the pro­ject after it is com­plete, a fact which can lead to a solu­tion beco­ming a non solu­tion, and large waste of money, pretty quickly. In this case, after the well itself is dug or res­to­red each com­mu­nity forms a water com­mit­tee. These com­mit­tees are edu­ca­ted about the impor­tance of hand washing and pro­per sani­ta­tion, and are res­pon­si­ble for ensu­ring that the well stays clean and maintained.

That there is also some pro­lo­gue to their aid — as shown below in this piece about a pro­ject they were on with one of their part­ners, Gram Vikas — bodes well for them.

Engreda was one of those pro­jects, but the water run­ning from their taps came at a higher price than our funding.The peo­ple had peti­tio­ned our imple­men­ting part­ner Gram Vikas to help them with the water pro­blem. But before brin­ging clean water to Engreda, Gram Vikas asked villa­gers to give a year of their time to cons­truct toi­lets and bathing rooms on faith. For over 30 years, Gram Vikas has taken a uni­que approach to deve­lop­ment work. For them, sani­ta­tion is the key to good health, and com­mu­nity par­ti­ci­pa­tion is the key to sustainability.

“Sani­ta­tion” meant toi­lets and sho­wers here; “participation” — a year plus of hard work. Junash said Gram Vikas’s pro­po­sal was ini­tially met with some resis­tance, as each of Engreda’s 130 fami­lies would have to do a “lot of work” that would cost “a lot of money.” For Gram Vikas to work in a com­mu­nity, 100% of the peo­ple must agree and con­tri­bute, and after a short time, they did.

Taken from Orissa, India. 58,345 hours for clean water.

Check it out, and do what you can, a dollar goes a long way when mul­ti­plied by 5000, so pass it on.

All pro­ceeds (100 per­cent of the money rai­sed) is direc­ted to pro­ject costs, and fun­ding sus­tai­na­ble clean water solu­tions in areas of grea­test need. The cha­rity also works to raise awa­re­ness of the water cri­sis through events, fun­drai­sing exhi­bi­tions, and other public awa­re­ness campaigns.

You can join the 20 something cam­paign no mat­ter what your age by dona­ting at our spe­cial page at cha­rity water.

title cons­trued from an Albert Szent-Gyorgyi quote

peace

Tags: Charity Water, water

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Blogging, Cooper Culture, Health, Links, activism, human rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.