interesting link nmw pos disc 40

David Bale said:

Phyllis Hurley proposed we focus specially on the water issue, and education relating to the benefits of clean water. It might help us move forward if we narrow our focus in this way.

Can we use this thread to bring together such matters as:

• What kinds of education relating to the benefits of clean water are currently in place?
• Is there good evidence of what works best?
• What challenges do social structures, institutions, and beliefs present to the establishment of good educational practice?
• The relative importance of the What and the How in clean water education
• Agencies involved in demonstrating or promulgating good practice

Please, everyone, feel free to add to, edit or amend any of the above.

Perhaps we might start by drawing on any material previous posted to one of the WDI discussions or workspaces. It doesn't matter if you can't locate exactly where this material was posted, someone will probably be able to find it and re-post it here.

Thanks, Phyllis!

I just returned from a two-week clean water project in the Machakos District of central Kenya on behalf of Other Paths, a Bay Area non-profit startup.

We provided Procter & Gamble's PUR Purifier of Water product (http://www.pghsi.com/) to three rural villages in conjunction with the Nairobi-based Population Services International (http://www.psi.org/), a social marketing and education organization.

PSI was particularly helpful in not only training our volunteers to train the recipients of PUR but also in providing follow-up support and continuing education.

We have also recently begun discussions with the African Medical and Research Foundation, who are leading several clean water and sanitation projects in East and South Africa (http://usa.amref.org/index.asp?P ageID=14&PiaID=6).

I'd be happy to share insights and information on this topic as Other Paths' African outreach progresses.

David Bale said:

Phyllis Hurley proposed we focus specially on the water issue, and education relating to the benefits of clean water. It might help us move forward if we narrow our focus in this way.

Can we use this thread to bring together such matters as:

• What kinds of education relating to the benefits of clean water are currently in place?
• Is there good evidence of what works best?
• What challenges do social structures, institutions, and beliefs present to the establishment of good educational practice?
• The relative importance of the What and the How in clean water education
• Agencies involved in demonstrating or promulgating good practice

Please, everyone, feel free to add to, edit or amend any of the above.

Perhaps we might start by drawing on any material previous posted to one of the WDI discussions or workspaces. It doesn't matter if you can't locate exactly where this material was posted, someone will probably be able to find it and re-post it here.

Thanks, Phyllis!

Matt Berlin said:

I just returned from a two-week clean water project in the Machakos District of central Kenya on behalf of Other Paths, a Bay Area non-profit startup.

We provided Procter & Gamble's PUR Purifier of Water product (http://www.pghsi.com/) to three rural villages in conjunction with the Nairobi-based Population Services International (http://www.psi.org/), a social marketing and education organization.

PSI was particularly helpful in not only training our volunteers to train the recipients of PUR but also in providing follow-up support and continuing education.

We have also recently begun discussions with the African Medical and Research Foundation, who are leading several clean water and sanitation projects in East and South Africa (http://usa.amref.org/index.asp?P ageID=14&PiaID=6).

I'd be happy to share insights and information on this topic as Other Paths' African outreach progresses.

... Matt Berlin

Oh cool Matt, I just read your post at Clean Water and was going to post a link to it here. I'm so happy to see you posting. I'm very interested in your work in Kenya, and more generally interested in your educational work. Thanks so much for bringing this to our attention.

David, thank you for starting this thread. You pose excellent questions. Matt, thank you for sharing your experience and for those very interesting links.

I would like to learn more about boreholes, water purifiers for villages and individual houses, sand filters, and rain water collection. There were posts on rain water collection earlier. Also, Liz Senoga wrote an interesting post about education about clean water. Maybe someone could transfer those here. Thanks! :)

Welcome, John, I'm so glad you have found us over here!

Just checking in and glad to see the posts.

Phyllis and I did a "clean water for the world" presentation in the Omidyar.Net Conference in Canton, Ohio. Excellent dialogue there. Thomas, Richard, John, Will, Nemo, Cindy, Michele, Phyllis and me. Did I miss anyone, Phyllis?

We did a review of our water project and then discussed the logistics aspects of having set up the first water purifier in Mubende, Uganda. There were great ideas regarding the issue of RHCF needing help to buy the big water tanks to put up on a high point -- on top of a hill. Richard gave us some ideas regarding the logistics of this and also regarding comparative shopping online regarding the prices of huge water tanks which can be bought in Kampala.

We all acknowledged how the grassroots level is still the way to go so the people who need clean safe water actually get the funds, education and support.

Liz, thank you for the excellent summary! Has RHCF found out how much each tank will cost?

I'm really glad to see this thread following up after Canton. I will be following the discussion and would like to support you in any way that I can.

I would be interested in helping raise awareness of clean water needs with creative tools such as the charity boxes and peace tiles. Perhaps we can also brainstorm any opportunities to do a creative workshop or program (think fundraiser!) for orgs working on clean water projects.

Thanks Phyllis! They are checking on that as we write.

Another thing we talked about in the Canton Conference is how the 3 NPOs (RHCF, FIMRC and New Life) connected and continue to connect in Uganda. New Life and RHCF staff in Uganda are in ongoing contact supporting one another regarding the water project. The collaborations are important and the ripples from those collaborations are what we are looking for.

FIMRC's Geoff and I will be in touch tonight regarding some projects in Haiti and he had already been in phone contact with RHCF and thinking about training to set up water purifiers as well. I just got off the phone with Doug as well. Dr. Ssenoga just e-mailed me and wants to update us ongoing regarding the progress of the water project there.

Education is undoubtedly a big factor in ensuring that people are open to drinking clean and safe water.

Awesome, Michele! I loved meeting you in Canton. Thanks for your enormous artistic and giving spirit. There are many ways to educate the world about clean water. Art and music are big education tools that can cut across most cultural barriers.

Welcome, Matt! Glad to read your posts.

Michele -> kids+art+charity said:

I'm really glad to see this thread following up after Canton. I will be following the discussion and would like to support you in any way that I can.

Just a reminder from the "professor" @ FU:

if you have feedback points in you bank, then you can support "things" by giving them "positive feedback"

:) nmw

Ray Brosseuk may well know what a suitable water tank costs - the one pictured at the end of this post left him with just $85 change.

Welcome Matt!

Feedback duly noted and dropped, Prof. Norb.

Nice to join the downpour of ideas gathering here. Looks like we may be able to put in a water well at one of the hospitals here in Sierra Leone. They have no water available to say nothing of running water. We are trying to figure out the best way to go for the limited resouces LemonAid Fund has for this.

LOL well just as I started to type I realized that running water for a hospital isn't exactly education. But I do think that this is the sort of project that this team might be quite helpful in bringing to fruition. Maybe you could start another thread? I have several questions, just to understand the project, but I'll hold off to see where this goes.

I just watched the most watched YouTube video this week The Zimmers "My Generation" I got a kick out of it because one of my first records as a kid was "The Who: Live at Leeds" and I would play that song over and over. 2007 is also the fortieth anniversary of The Summer of Love. Celebrations using the anniversary might be a way to draw attention to the dire situation of water borne disease worldwide. I ruminate about that slightly at Hats For Health.

I'm just wondering....

and I know ya'll will give me the low-down...

Simple question: has there been any collaboration with Ethos Water and the orgs listed on its website? See: http://www.ethoswater.com/index. cfm?objectid=DF3B7A10-F1F6-6035- B6914A785D93B8E3

Reason I ask is b/c today I sent a link to someone to check out the online community so was re-reading the O.Net "corporate" pages and happened to notice that Ethos Water is listed in the Omidyar Network Portfolio.

What are the synergies??!

Michele asks:

Simple question: has there been any collaboration with Ethos Water and the orgs listed on its website? See: http://www.ethoswater.com/index. cfm?objectid=DF3B7A10-F1F6-6035- B6914A785D93B8E3

This is as simple an answer as I can find:

I see that there are eight organisations listed in the Ethos Water website, including several under the umbrella heading 'The Millenium Alliance'.

The eight are:

CARE

Global Water

Global Green USA

Mercy Corps

Emmanuel International

Food for the Hungry

Lifewater International

Living Water International

Water Missions International

WaterAid

Water Partners International

We sent the following letter to over thirty different organisations including to all those in bold (above):

Dear [name of the organisation],

Omidyar.Network have undertaken to donate $5000 to the nine non-profits that win most votes from Onet members. I am part of a small team putting forward a proposal for Attacking Water-borne Diarrheal Illnesses (WDI), the world’s number two killer. We have to act VERY quickly.

We have decided to put forward one non-profit in each of these five categories:

• rehydration
• education for health providers
• sanitary conditions - physical solutions
• education on necessity of sanitary conditions.
• clean water sources

Does [name of the nonprofit] have a specific program or discrete project that is in need of $5000 financial support?

We want to put forward proposals that are clearly innovative and cost-effective. Other Onet members would expect some feedback from the winning non-profits, so they could see exactly how the money was being spent.

Are you interested?

If so, you will need to reply by Friday, November 10th at the very latest.

Best wishes

You will see that So 7 of the 11 organisations listed on the Ethos Water website were organisations that we emailed during the Q4 Funding proposal when deciding on the five nonprofits we wanted to obtain funding for.

The tables about a page into the WDI Funding proposal classified all the organisations that replied into three categories.

STRONGEST CONTENDERS were those who came up with details of projects for us to support that closely matched at least one of our five key areas.

OTHER CONTENDERS group comprises projects that appeared to have at least one or two drawbacks from our particular perspective.

The third group were classified as THE REST. Usually this meant that the reply they had given us was generalised, formulaic or lacking all relevance to our request.

With the exception of WaterAid, who replied very late (and putting forward a strong proposal) the organisations that are not listed failed to reply to our letter.

You will see from the detailed lists how the seven Ethos Water organisations fared.

David - thanks so much for the history and explanation.

Couple of thoughts...

I'm not so surprised that the group of orgs affiliated with Ethos Water didn't respond in a more urgent way; After all, they are NFPs already affiliated with a corporate entity that must be providing some financial support.

I think more interesting would be to approach Ethos Water. How can this for-profit company partner with the o/net initiatives that are in the works now and in the future?

Ethos apparently has received funding from the Omidyar Network; it would seem a natural synergy for them to help uplift our amazing grassroots projects.

Thoughts? What do we know about Ethos Water?

David,

over in num2, people are saying there might be some ambiguity about the word "clean" -- maybe you could take a look and see whether you might want to use a different term in this thread.

In this light, I would consider "safe" best -- as "healthy" is also rather ambiguous (like: "does it have vitamins?" or something like that).

Best of all would be if water could be "certified" by some kind of test/board of approval -- and then appropriately branded -- of course this is what "bottled" water is all about.

Please note: I have no clue about local conditions, so please take my remarks with an extra grain of salt.

;) nmw

David, thanks for the summary for Michele.

Michelle, Norb, David, it might help to review the Youtubes that Marissa posted on Simple Solutions #2 if you all have not done so already. It has to do with the problems of privatization.

Thanks for your posts, Michele and Norb. Yes, I still fluctuate between "safe" and "healthy" but for now lean more towards "healthy" in synch with the "healthy water" campaign per JS and Nancy Peddle in the Lemonaid Fund.

Liz,

thanks for the "heads up" on the videos -- but "water" is not really my area of expertise (I'm more the "information retrieval" jock ;).

In this vein, I think David has chosen quite well (though what matters most, I guess, is which concepts the people he would like to engage with here would use when they're "searching" for information).

see also Understanding Your Web Audience

That's okay, Norbert. Raising awareness regarding the healthy and safe water global problems is important for all. As you may well have more ideas regarding implementation and the action part of the solutions. You just never know.;)

Yes, and raising awareness about "information retrieval" issues also leads to "raising awareness regarding the healthy and safe water global problems".

I understand that water is an extremely important issue, and that is why I so strongly support focusing on this issue.

On a "side note" -- one person who also has alot of experience with "creating health" (vs. "attacking problems") is Tom Munnecke (however, I have no idea what he's been up to lately ;)....