Posts

, ,

Improving Access to Clean Water in Haiti

Clean Water in Haiti
Haiti has struggled with a copious number of natural disasters in the past. These natural disasters tend to exacerbate the effects of poverty, including the lack of proper sanitation. Among rural citizens in Haiti, only 20% of the population has the resources to sanitize properly. A lack of sanitary water plays a significant role in the quality of life in Haiti. Luckily, organizations are working to provide aid for clean water in Haiti and increase access to sanitary water for all citizens.

Pure Water for the World

Pure Water for the World started more than 15 years ago. Since then, this organization has made a significant impact on the access to clean water in Haiti among other countries. The program primarily assists Honduras and Haiti; it has positively impacted the lives of over 750,000 people.

Pure Water for the World dedicates itself to several solutions through its WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) program. Its goal is to work alongside the public to devise a solution that is the best fit for their communities. Pure Water for the World uses four main strategies. These include water technologies, sanitation technologies, education and training, and sustainability measures.

Water technologies may include installing a pipe that can bring water to a school, collecting rainwater to use or creating filters for communal use. One of the program’s goals is to add handwashing stations, which would help to lower the risk of disease spread. Additionally, the program attempts to educate everyone on proper sanitation and get classes in schoolrooms to discuss hygiene. The WASH program also checks up with regions that it has previously helped to make sure that their chosen method is a long-term solution rather than a temporary fix.

Pure Water for the World has been a successful program so far. In northern Haiti, filters were put into people’s homes to help with water purity. When a group of families was visited for a filter check, the results were fantastic. All of the filters were working well. That leaves a likely high success rate in the 100 homes where the filters are working to maintain access to clean water in Haiti.

The Road to Hope

In addition, not only is Pure Water for the World pursuing changes in Haiti but so is The Road to Hope. The Road to Hope acknowledges that not all of the numerous projects and plans to help Haiti are in line with individual communities’ goals. The organization seeks to work alongside Haitians to ensure successful strategies.

The Road to Hope’s goals is primarily to educate and to end poverty in Haiti. These accomplishments would help improve overall access to sanitary water. An overall increase in wealth would result in the availability of more expensive materials to provide purified water throughout Haiti.

Overall, water-related illnesses have caused children to miss school 443 million times. This demonstrates the broader social implications of lacking access to clean water. The Road to Hope provides the people of Haiti with community centers to give them a place where they can get proper sanitation and safe water.

Global Environment Facility

Furthermore, on June 3, 2020, the Global Environment Facility approved a five-year, $4.5 million water project in Haiti.  The project hopes to be able to make clean water available to 90,000 Haitians. If the project is successful, it will make quite an impact on the quality of life for many Haitians.

In conclusion, Pure Water for the World, The Road to Hope, and the Global Environment Facility are providing promising solutions to unsafe water. The lack of sanitation and pure water is a threat to Haiti, but these organizations have proved to be successful in providing clean water in Haiti.

– Hailee Shores
Photo: Flickr

, , ,

Providing Water Services To the Poor

Water Services to the Poor
Water services to the poor are severely lacking around the globe. The World Health Organization estimates that 2.1 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services. Moreover, more than twice as many people lack safe sanitation. Consequently, 361,000 children less than the age of five die from diarrhea, every year. Of the people who do not have safely managed water, 844 million do not even have basic drinking water services. These conditions compel 263 million people to collect water from sources far from home — a process that takes over 30 minutes per trip. A further 159 million people still drink untreated water from surface water sources, such as streams or lakes.

At the current pace, the world will fall short of meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (U.N. SDG) of universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030. Accelerating efforts to meet this goal will cost as much as $166 billion per year for capital expenditures alone. It seems that to achieve this U.N. SDG, something must change and soon.

A New Funding Approach

Private finance could play an important role in expanding access to improved, reliable water services to the poor. However, most providers that serve the poor are not privately financeable in their present state and will continue to require subsidies. Hence, development assistance and philanthropic funds are of utmost importance to protect the global poor.

A global funding model, known as a conceptual Global Water Access Fund (GWAF), has been established in other sectors to raise additional funds for targeted interventions. It pools resources in a way that provides incentives for access and utility performance for poor households.

This method is tried and tested. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, received $15 billion in pledges and yielded a net increase in funding. Unitaid, an organization that accelerates access to high-quality drugs and diagnostics in developing countries, generated more than $1 billion through a levy on airline tickets.

Investments in the poor are often perceived as having low or even negative returns. Therefore, pro-poor utilities face challenges entering financial markets. This also explains why profitable utilities are hesitant to expand their services to the global poor. GWAF changes this by bridging the funding gap and placing pro-poor utilities in stronger positions to attract capital for further service investments.

Making Individual Change

Though funding seems like a larger issue, there are ways for individuals to support clean water for all. Many nonprofits focus on bringing clean water services to the poor. Here are three organizations that are dedicated to the proliferation of clean water services to the world’s poor.

3 Nonprofits Tackling Global Water Services for the Poor

  1. Pure Water for the World works in Central American and Caribbean communities. The organization aims to provide children and families with the tools and education to develop sustainable water, hygiene and sanitation solutions. They directly connect fundraising dollars with impact, which immediately helps potential supporters see how their donation or peer-to-peer fundraising campaign will make a difference for the people they serve.
  2. Blood:Water is another nonprofit that works to bring clean water and HIV/AIDS support to over 1 million people. They partner with African grassroots organizations to make a change in 11 countries. Blood:Water works to provide technical, financial and organizational support to grassroots organizations. In this vein, they aim to help strengthen their effectiveness in their areas of operation.
  3. Drop in the Bucket’s mission is another organization that works towards water sanitation. They build wells and sanitation systems at schools throughout sub-Saharan Africa, enabling youth to fully harness the life-changing power of education. They teach the importance of clean water, hands and living spaces. Furthermore, the organization encourages girls to go to school, instead of spending hours fetching water.

Remaining on Track

Although sustainable development goals seem a difficult achievement to reach, innovative techniques such as GWAF and individual efforts through donations take steps in the right direction in ensuring water services to the poor. With nonprofit organizations such as the aforementioned as well as assistance from international organizations and governments like, there is still hope in reaching the U.N. SDGs.

–Elizabeth Qiao
Photo: Pixabay

, ,

Pure Water for the World

Pure Water for the World
Pure Water for the World (PWW) is an international nonprofit organization helping end the world water crisis. The organization currently works in Haiti and Honduras, bringing “water filtration, safe sanitation and hygiene education” to struggling communities.

Almost 1 billion people around the world do not have access to clean water, and according to PWW, “Lack of clean water, lack of sanitation and unfamiliarity with good hygiene practices kill more people every year than all acts of war and violence, auto accidents and HIV/AIDS combined.”

It is clear the state of water is dismal, and PWW is doing something about it.

The organization has a community-based approach, with 90 percent of its employees operating on the ground in Haiti or Honduras “changing lives by empowering people to be a part of the solution.”

Functioning mainly in rural areas, PWW first scouts out potential communities by meeting with community leaders and assessing which areas need the most improvement.

In order to maximize the number of people that benefit from its work, PWW identifies key locations, often schools and health clinics, where it installs its water filtration technology and sanitation facilities.

While installing new technologies to create clean water is a useful strategy, educational training is the backbone of PWW’s programs.

In target communities, an individual is chosen by the locals to be trained to maintain and fix PWW’s systems. This allows for the region to become self-sufficient, so that when the organization leaves, the improvements can be maintained.

In addition to recognizing one community member as a sanitation leader, hygiene education is also given to communities at large.

If just one person misuses a central water source, contamination can occur; PWW makes efforts to ensure that all are educated about how to properly sustain hygiene. Education is essential to create long-term improvements.

The organization epitomized the importance of education when it said, “PWW can deliver safe water to a village, but without the knowledge of how and why this improves their lives, and the tools to reduce disease, water will be temporary medicine at best – treating the symptoms without rooting out the underlying causes.”

To ensure that all installations have gone as planned, PWW returns to communities three months after the initial work is finished to ensure that everyone has received proper training, and again after seven months to assess the overall effectiveness of its program.

These final evaluations allow for the organization to adapt to new challenges and to learn how to better tackle water crises.

As stated by PWW, “Improved water, sanitation and hygiene practices saves lives and has significant implications in reducing poverty.” By installing technology to create clean water, and by educating people about how to maintain clean water and prevent water-borne diseases, Pure Water for the World is helping eliminate poverty, and is making a difference in people’s lives.

— Emily Jablonski

Sources: Classy, Pure Water for the World
Photo: Pure Water for the World