LemonAid Fund is working on a Stop WDI project in Sierra Leone related to getting safe water to one of the main hospitals for the people in the East End of Freetown - Rokupa Hospital. Currently, they do not have any water facilities for the hospital. No water for surgery, sanitation, or drinking....or anything for that matter. Can you imagine having to bring your own water to drink and to wash your own bed if you want it sanitized??

We have put together a proposal for a simple hand dug well with a pump on the top. The cost is $6,000. Maureen Lemonaid Fund's intern would like to leave the well as her legacy as she worked at the hospital for a number of months seeing things that if you were in the U.S. as a doctor you would only read about in text books.

So we raised our first $50 during our March and April www.goodsearch.com health campaign.

Thanks for starting this, Nancy. And good for Maureen!

A major problem with many initiatives is thinking up ways of sustainable funding. If the present momentum is maintained, and using Good Search as the sole fund generator, you could expect to raise $300 per year. At that rate the project would be totally funded in (just) 20 years!

Michele asked in a sister thread if Ethos Water might be approached for funding. Is this the kind of avenue we should be going down? I get easily confused in this area of funding. I didn't understand why New Life were happy to provide a purifier for a part of Mubende district, but not for Gulu or for as many parts of Mubende as it would take to provide everyone with clean safe healthy water. Was it because we provided the funding via the Q4 initiative? If so, could we put together some kind of price list based on estimates from solution providers?

Obviously any organisation has limited financial means - but how are decisions made to provide clean safe healthy water in place A but not in place B?

In the non-profits list I am compiling for use in the Worldwide Connectory, I have completed only letters A - F (only from a UK perspective so far - please feel free to add other non-profits you know about). This reveals three organisations as listing among their current projects in Sierra Leone the installation of technology to provide clean safe healthy water. The first is Concern, who write on their website:

Public and environmental health is an important component of the health programme and so Concern constructs community wells with hand pumps, constructs community latrines and trains village hygiene promoters, known as blue flag volunteers.

They are known as blue flag volunteers as they are recognised by a blue flag outside their house; which makes them easily identifiable in a community.

The second is FIOH who write:

In 1988 FIOH UK co-ordinator, Mike Thomas and his daughter Clare (then aged 15) visited the FIOH Group in Freetown, led by Olatunde Johnson, and gave a small grant for a bakery and pineapple plantation.

They stayed with Olatunde's sister in a poor home in the main street.

During this visit they accidentally encountered a bad slum area named Kroobay housing 5,000 people. The area was adjacent to the south western coast and the main sewage outfalls from Freetown City (the capital) ran through the settlement to the sea. Most people lived in poorly constructed shacks made from corrugated iron. The main problem the people faced was that they had no immediate access to clean water and needed a clean water supply to be piped down from the City centre. Mike undertook to raise £700 for a water supply on condition that a co-operative organisation would be formed to receive the money. Over the next 18 months the Freetown Kroobay Development Association (FKDA) was formed and three pipelines were installed. A BBC television programme 'Trade Slaves' later revealed that the three pipelines were the only development help the community had received.

And the third is ActionAid who write:

ActionAid’s work in Sierra Leone supports communities affected by the war through improving the access to food, educational facilities, shelter, water and sanitation facilities and health education for poor and marginalised people.

Once G - Z non-profits are also listed, a clearer picture will emerge about just which organisations are active where, and what their activity there consists of.

I'm hoping that might help in seeking partners for both funding and for new initiatives - for example, like Maureen's well!

Collaboration is happening for Mubende right now in terms of funding. That is in process. Not just for purifiers, but also for wells for different parts of Mubende, tanks, etc.

There are other NPOs with funds who I think will be helping Mubende district. Liz and I have also been in touch with someone who is collaborating with Dr. Ssenoga for boreholes in another part of Uganda. Another foundation in Kentucky.

Liz has been doing a lot of recruiting of clinicians, and physicians regarding the water cause, specifically in Africa. The response has been wonderful. 14 clinicians and educators, inc. 4 African Americans, went to New life to learn about the purifiers, and want to go to Africa. and more physicians and educators interested in the water cause. She is speaking again to a group in another part of Kentucky. She has been invited to be on the Board of the County Medical Society with a warehouse full supplies and equipment they can share with Africa. Lots of legwork, networking and connecting the dots. I have been doing the same with my circles.

Nancy, I am still using Goodsearch for LemonAid. I am positive you will be able to get funding for the well. Why not create a dropcash campaign here for that worthy project? It can be a good start.

My work is focused on facilitating information retrieval (aka "search"), such that people searching for information (i.e., people with "queries") and people able to provide information (i.e., people with "expertise") can meet each other and exchange the information needed.

For example, if someone were looking for a name related to hygiene, then they would thereby be enabled to match information seekers with information providers be being listed on a webpage with the appropriate focus (water, sanitation, whatever). This is a very cost effective and efficient way for people with common interests (i.e., "communities") to meet.

interesting link nmw pos disc 5

David Bale said:

I didn't understand why New Life were happy to provide a purifier for a part of Mubende district, but not for Gulu or for as many parts of Mubende as it would take to provide everyone with clean safe healthy water. Was it because we provided the funding via the Q4 initiative? If so, could we put together some kind of price list based on estimates from solution providers?

David, you are right. The Q4 funding paid for the water purifier from New Life. In fact, when we were raising the money for New Life, we asked them to please put one in the area served by Rural Health Care Foundation, and that is what they did. The folks at RHCF picked the location, and Doug Lark from New Life went over to install it, with Linda and Liz. Many, many more are obviously still needed, and that always brings us back to the hardest part, namely the funding.

One of the participants in Canton pointed out that $3,000 for a water purifier is really not that much money, so why aren't there water purifiers all over the place? I guess that leads us back to the need to generate awareness of the problem.

Marissa pointed out that real progress is being made in the area of awareness, and that is surely a good thing! I'm glad we now have active threads working on these problems again.

Nancy Peddle said:

LemonAid Fund is working on a Stop WDI project in Sierra Leone related to getting safe water to one of the main hospitals for the people in the East End of Freetown - Rokupa Hospital. Currently, they do not have any water facilities for the hospital. No water for surgery, sanitation, or drinking....or anything for that matter. Can you imagine having to bring your own water to drink and to wash your own bed if you want it sanitized??

We have put together a proposal for a simple hand dug well with a pump on the top. The cost is $6,000. Maureen Lemonaid Fund's intern would like to leave the well as her legacy as she worked at the hospital for a number of months seeing things that if you were in the U.S. as a doctor you would only read about in text books.

So we raised our first $50 during our March and April www.goodsearch.com health campaign.

Thanks Nancy for getting the water funding out to the public's eye. The funding for the Rokupa Hospital well is under way and I am planning on getting it on the website as well, in order to make donations simpler for anyone interested. I will keep everyone posted on the updates with this project. Another project that LemonAid is also working on is some health lectures for primary school children. I recently came across research that shows how leaving a 2 liter bottle of water in the sun for six hours will purify the water. Although this is only a small achievement for water purification, it is also one of the most cost effective. It is easy for children to learn and make use of in these poor communities where water supplies are unclean. I just thought others might like to know about this research and use the education tool for other projects.

from:http://www.everythingyoualwayswantedtoknow.com/watertreatment/treatments.html#uv

Ultra Violet Light:

"Water passes through a clear chamber where it is exposed to Ultra Violet (UV) Light. UV light effectively destroys bacteria and viruses. However, how well the UV system works depends on the energy dose that the organism absorbs. If the energy dose is not high enough, the organism’s genetic material may only be damaged rather than disrupted.

The advantages of using UV include:

No known toxic or significant nontoxic byproducts introduced Removes some organic contaminants Leaves no smell or taste in the treated water Requires very little contact time (seconds versus minutes for chemical disinfection) Improves the taste of water because some organic contaminants and nuisance microorganisms are destroyed Many pathogenic microorganisms are killed or rendered inactive. Does not affect minerals in water

The disadvantages of using UV include:

UV radiation is not suitable for water with high levels of suspended solids, turbidity, color, or soluble organic matter. These materials can react with UV radiation, and reduce disinfection performance. Turbidity makes it difficult for radiation to penetrate water and pathogens can be 'shadowed', protecting them from the light. UV light is not effective against any non-living contaminant, lead, asbestos, many organic chemicals, chlorine, etc. Tough cryptosporidia cysts are fairly resistant to UV light. Requires electricity to operate. In an emergency situation when the power is out, the purification will not work."

I am thinking that the UV rays of the sunlight would be the same. There seems to be pros and cons with regards to all the different systems.

It seems that the best systems are the ones that use "combined technologies" which address filtration, purification and disinfection. We also need to consider all the variables- If the water source is a muddy waterhole, UV would be ineffective- the water will need to be clarified first possibly by using some type of filtration system, then use UV/sunlight.

Just my 2 cents based on what I have been reading.

Nice input. Thanks!!!

Now that we have tagging, wouldn't it make sense for us to develop a common system of tag usage that would enable us to retrieve useful posts, such as Marissa's above.

If we all use the same tags it will be much simpler to bring together the information we need.

I'll start a new workspace called WDI Tags where people can list the tags that will be most useful in this respect. Then, if we remember to keep to our agreed tags as much as possible, we should have an automatic indexing system.

That could solve the problem of information retrieval from earlier thread. It will only work effectively if we limit our agreed tagging to matters of information only. We can use other tags for other purposes, but it would be good to have a system of links to different WDI approaches, to different WDI organisations and to useful sources of information.

Yes please! That's great. Thanks Marissa too. I see I didn't say that. We have added this information to the posters. Very important especially when teaching kids. Not giving them all the information can really create problems.

I came across this idea for water storage in use in India. It's a plastic bag, either 500 liter or 1000 liter, that is installed in an owner built trench. It's a good idea. Often the connection between drinking water and water for agricultural use is obscured. But water for agriculture is essential. So in some places the water hole is for cows and other animals as well as for people to drink. That often results in water-borne illness. None the less water for animals as well as crops is essential to people. This is a cleaver and relatively low-cost solution. I'd be curious about how long the plastic lasts.