Friendly Water for the World

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During my 40-40-40 Lenten challenge, one of the organizations I donated to was Friendly Water for the World. Water is a universal need, even if the need varies from city to city, country to country, village to village.

While in Mexico, we had purified water trucked in every week for our drinking water. Last week we stayed in El Centro, California, which is below sea level. Tap water there is too brackish (salty) to drink. So they use purifiers, or buy bottled water. Driving through the White Mountains of Arizona, we met a family whose car overheated. We had several liters of water in case this happened to us, and we gave them all of it. We've had to keep water on us at all times, not just for us but also for our dog. While water may not be something that you think about daily because of its ready availability to you, it is something that a whole ton of people think about constantly because of their lack of it.

Friendly Water for the World board chairman David Albert shared with me how this organization is not only providing water filters that will purify any water source in any country, but also how they are training individuals to build, distribute, install and maintain these filters as a source of income generating jobs that have provided housing for survivors of domestic violence. David shares this story:


FRIENDLY WATER FOR THE WORLD – DO I HAVE A DEAL FOR YOU!
by David Albert

I know how to take $1,800 and, in seven months, turn it into more than $115,000, and build 12 safe and secure apartments for domestic violence survivors and their children.

Want to know my secret?

Here's how it happened. 


Friendly Water for the World trained a group of 11 women from the Rape Hurts Foundation in Jinja, Uganda, for five days last July in fabrication, distribution, installation, and maintenance of BioSand Filters. The total cost, including the necessary tools which are loaned to them for as long as they are using them, was $1,800, paid for with a small grant from the West Olympia Rotary Club. (Do any of you belong to a Rotary Club? Church? Friends Meeting? Women’s Group? You can fund a grant too!)


Then the women got to work, selling water filters to the police, to prisons, to an international organization supporting foster kids, to schools, to women with HIV, to village associations, etc., etc. And then, the filters do their magic. No more waterborne illnesses – no typhoid, bacterial or amoebic dysentery, Rotavirus, diarrhea. Kids can attend school regularly. Families save money – as much as 70% of their income, which had been going to medical treatment and pharmaceuticals. Typical savings are $45 a month (sometimes much more), about the same amount as the cost of a single BioSand Water Filter. Thereafter, clean water is FREE for up to the next 30 years – the life of the filters. One family tells another family...and it spreads. No other marketing necessary. People are walking miles to see the filters, others are hoping to get employed in the project, still others are begging for training for their own villages. 


Rape Hurts Foundation is now employing 22 full-time workers on BioSand Filters, producing nine a day. And with it, came the fulfillment of a dream – a safe and secure housing complex for survivors of domestic violence and their children. All the funds from the women's first sale of filters to area police were dedicated to the complex, which should be completed in a period of just a few months.


What we at Friendly Water for the World have discovered again and again is that while communities may have very little in the way of access to material resources, they often have huge reserves of intelligence, resilience, pent-up initiative, labor, generosity, compassion and caring. By sharing our knowledge, and providing training in ensuring clean water, we help to end a culture of dependency, enabling people and communities to take charge of their lives. And, in doing so, we begin to take charge of our own…and realize our common dreams. 

Please partner with them, and with us – (and someday there will be no such distinction as "us" and "them"!) – to make even more dreams come true.

Join us! We are Friendly Water for the World. www.friendlywater.net

*Note: Because I already donated to Friendly Water during my 40-40-40 challenge, I chose to donate (my 37th donation!) to the Rape Hurts Foundation.

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