Water Issues (World Water Day and beyond)

[Guest]

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[Jill]

Tomorrow, March 22, is World Water Day, 2011, a good day, perhaps, actually just like every other day would be a good day, to reflect on how inexpressibly lucky we all are to have access to all the clean water we could ever want. That's drinking water, bathing water, washing, cooking, use-it-for-whatever water.  Inexpressibly lucky when you think of the millions upon millions upon millions* who never ever have had clean water, whose lives and whose families’ lives are forever at risk because of the now irrefutable correlation between lack of access to clean water, a nightmare of life-threatening water-borne illnesses and high mortality rates.

Sometime, if water-related issues particularly speak to you, as they have for me now, for years, there is an abundance of organizations out there that maybe you’ll consider, sometime, trying to get involved with and support, that is, when and if you might be able.  Very very very occasionally, Kiva even has a water-related loan that comes up (and that usually lasts about half a sneeze’s worth of a millisecond).

I, surprise, surprise**, really like Ryan’s Well Foundation.  But I also like water.org and Global Giving.  Those aren’t the only choices out there, not by a long shot, and I can’t tell you with any kind of certainty that they’re even the best.  Better for each of you who is interested to do your own research and pick your own favorites.


A really really beautiful book about water that one day, just incredibly, came flying off some bookstore shelf and landed smack dab directly into my unsuspecting arms, is called Blue Planet Run.
“…two books in one: First it is about an extraordinary 15,000 mile relay race – the longest relay run in human history – in which 20 athletes spent 95 days running around the globe to spread awareness of the world’s water crisis. Secondly, it is a showcase of powerful, inspiring, disturbing and hopeful images captured by leading photojournalists around the world who documented the human face of the crisis and its possible solutions…”


The pics here are of Sudanese kids, Indonesian kids, Burundian people, a Malawi kid, Haitian kids, “women and children gathering at a mountain spring in Haiti's deforested hills for the daily chore of hauling water”, and Afghan kids, in that order.  For me, these pictures are obscene in that they depict the far more obscene reality that with all the wealth and natural resources that we have in this world, so many people have to live like these people and people in almost every country on nearly every continent on this, our inexplicably,unaccountably have-have not-dichotomized planet.


*I wish that that were hyperbole on my part, but I’m afraid that it isn’t.  Check out, for instance, this fact sheet here.
**Not!  

[Jill]

A Little More in Connection with World Water Day, tomorrow….

Went on a quick Internet ride to see if I could find any reasonably captivating short videos about the Clean Water Access issue.  Came across this one which I liked, in part I’m sure, because of the music, because I got to kind of “rock” along with it as I was watching.  And it’s short.  

You know, when I think about people, little kids, old women, about anyone having to walk kilometer after kilometer, virtually, for miles every day, and often more than once a day, carrying a container filled with water, however dirty it may be, (for them, it’s still water, and probably the only water, so they’re likely really glad to have it,) all I have to do is think about how really really heavy it feels to me whenever I carry even a bucket half-to-three quarters full of water outside around here, where I live.  And really, when I do that, it’s almost always for probably no more than 10, 20 or 30 yards, max.  I have to tell you, it’s really heavy, to the point that I almost can’t imagine how those people can do it.  And especially, the kids.  It’s just wrong.
Just ol' "Have," here, thinking once again about all the "Have Nots." And still wondering why....

World Water Day video from the organization: Charity:Water

[Jill]

I’d asked the moderators if I could split these posts off from the News Stories thread so we could have a thread devoted, particularly, to the issue of water, which I’ve been lately discovering is even tremendously more important than I’d already known and which affects us, or soon will affect us in a way that most of us Westerners are still very far from comprehending.  They moved the posts for me, yesterday, and I appreciated it.

“The Burden of Thirst
Where clean water is scarcest, the task of fetching water defines life for women.”
A short and pretty effective little video, here.

“Aylito Binayo's feet know the mountain. Even at four in the morning she can run down the rocks to the river by starlight alone and climb the steep mountain back up to her village with 50 pounds of water on her back. She has made this journey three times a day for nearly all her 25 years. So has every other woman in her village of Foro, in the Konso district of southwestern Ethiopia. Binayo dropped out of school when she was eight years old, in part because she had to help her mother fetch water from the Toiro River. The water is dirty and unsafe to drink; every year that the ongoing drought continues, the once mighty river grows more exhausted. But it is the only water Foro has ever had….."
and the continuation of the article for which this is the lead-off paragraph, here.


Check out, especially, the 9th picture and its caption at the slide show, here.  Small wonder that some of the developing* countries have such a difficult time moving forward, joining the 21st century.  Even if education were available for their children, which, in many places it isn’t, a lot of the kids wouldn’t have time to go to school, to be able to take advantage of it.  They’re way too busy with much more immediate concerns – like fetching water several times a day to keep their families and themselves alive.

* Saying “third world” countries sounds too much to me like we’re saying “third rate” countries, as though we’re implying that they aren’t, that they never will be as good as oh-so- superior, oh-so-wonderful WE are, but that’s just a personal thing. And clearly, how we talk about them pales very very much in significance compared with how we feel about them, and most important, what we do, or don't do with respect to them.

Wrote the preceding late last night, after I got home from a happy night out.
Just now, early this morning, came across this headline:
Concern in Tokyo over spike in tap water radiation

I had been thinking about the Japanese and the issue of clean drinking (and other kinds of) water.  Well, I had been thinking about them especially after my good friend had reminded me yesterday that the issue of clean water (access, sustainability, etc.) isn’t an issue for the developing countries, only.  I know that some of you probably switched over to bottled water, maybe even a long time ago.  But for those of you, who, like me, still drink and who very much like to drink straight out of the tap, it goes way beyond horrible to contemplate the possibility that something might happen to our water system so that we never again would be able to have that luxury.  A luxury, I might add, that I, much too much of the time, have taken very much for granted.

[Diane R]

For those of you who participate in Groupon (and I know many KFs did so when Kiva offered its "$25-loan-for-$15" deal) and would like to contribute to water.org, there's a Deal of the Day going on now which is relevant here:

"Donate $15 to Help Water.org Provide Safe Drinking Water to People in the Developing World, and an Anonymous Donor Will Supplement Each Pledge with a $10 Donation Up to $20,000"

So, the first 2,000 donors will have $10 added to their $15 donation, when made through Groupon.  As of this writing, there are 1,255 donors and slightly over 14 hours left in which to take advantage of this matching offer.  There's fine print, of course, but it's worth a read.

http://www.groupon.com/deals/water-org


--Diane.

[Kay]

From art to intervention
Chicago native making water filters in Dominican Republic, Haiti that were inspired in art class

http://www.latimes.com/health/ct-x-n-third-world-water-20110323,0,5208397.story?page=1

Prayer alone was no longer enough for Lisa Ballantine, who watched the families fill their baby bottles with murky river water that sickened and even killed their children.

After returning from a yearlong mission trip to the Dominican Republic in 2000, Ballantine, 43, knew there must be a way to help villagers who had neither plumbing nor a way to sanitize their water supply.

The Chicago native stumbled upon a solution while taking art courses at Northern Illinois University a few years later. With just a few materials — including clay, sawdust and colloidal silver — Ballantine learned she could build a ceramic water filter that was remarkably effective at purifying water at a relatively low cost.

. . . .

In 2006, Ballantine and her husband, Michael, sold their home in Wayne and moved to the Dominican Republic. Since then, she has built two factories — one in the Dominican Republic and one in neighboring Haiti — that together produce up to 4,500 ceramic filters monthly. She says she has distributed a total of about 35,000 filters with the help of organizations including the American Red Cross, Save the Children and OxFam International.

During the aftermath of Haiti's 2010 earthquake, relief workers found the filters especially valuable, and less wasteful than the thousands of plastic water bottles littering the island, she said.

The ceramic filters cost $35 — not cheap for villagers who earn about $5 per day, Ballantine said. She works with some families who cannot afford them, but said it is important that residents pay for the filters, which last about five years.

"We try to never give the filters away, even if we charge them a few dollars," said Ballantine, who formed a nonprofit group called FilterPure Inc. "They are more invested in it, they take better care of it and they value it more."

. . . .

The round-bottom ceramic pot is made from a mixture of clay, a combustible material such as sawdust or rice husks, and colloidal silver. The colloidal silver is a naturally occurring antibacterial, which is mixed into the clay and combustible material.

The mixture is made into a filter and kiln fired, burning out the combustible material and leaving micro pores coated with the silver to clean the water, according to experts. During the firing process, about a half-inch of charcoal is produced within the filter to improve taste and color. The filter, which is designed with a rim, is placed on a 5-gallon plastic storage bucket with a spigot at the bottom for dispensing.

Water is poured through the ceramic pot and filtered into the receptacle bucket. The filter sanitizes water at a rate of about 2 liters per hour, Ballantine said.

David Webb, owner of Ceramic Filters Co. Inc., in Brooklyn, Mich., helped Ballantine develop and test her ceramic filters to make sure they are effective and contain the correct amount of silver. The water is more than 99.9 percent pure after undergoing the process, he said.

"She has every batch tested to be sure no pathogenic material goes through the product," he said. "Generally what happens to silver, it's still there when the product breaks or is thrown away. It's an insufficient amount of silver to do damage to a human but enough to cause a hostile environment for the bacteria."

. . . .

About 1.8 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases, the majority of which are attributed to an unsafe water supply, according to the World Health Organization. About 90 percent of those who die are children younger than 5, the organization reports.

Yet Ballantine has found some villages less receptive to the ceramic filters.

"I think maybe it's hard for them to see the future when it's, 'What do I eat today?'" Ballantine said.

But today, she can't meet the demand, she said.

. . . .

For more information, go to filterpurefilters.org.

[Jill]

In what will not come as a surprise to those of you who “know” me, I absolutely love the Internet, especially the gift of learning that it places at our very fingertips.

I just now was tripping about, looking for something absolutely unrelated, and came upon this really pretty wonderful slide show presented in celebration of World Water Day, 2011.  The picture I’m posting may be my favorite of the bunch, but there are a lot of them that are pretty neat. CLICK on the pic to get a bigger smile -- his and yours.  

The issue of the (for me) unspeakable and inexcusable travesty that exists of the millions, maybe billions of people who have to live their lives without having easy, or, too often, any access to clean water is one that bothers me enough, that I feel is important enough, to the point that it is my hope and plan to keep posting in this thread for as long as I am here. That, just to remind people about it, to try to get more people to think about it in the hope that others will get galvanized enough to want to try to do something about it.  Pretty obviously, I would love it if more of you would post here and would keep posting here, as well. (Thanks Diane and Kay for caring enough about this issue to want to post).

EDIT: This one of a little girl fetching water for her family in the slums of Karachi, Pakistan, is pretty special, too.

Unrelated: As long as I’m making a cameo appearance here today, anyway, perhaps sometime later on you’ll see a post about one of my all-time favorite “Gregs” in the world and possibly, a couple of others.  Just to give fair warning…..

[Jill]

Hadn't thought I'd be posting today or maybe even for awhile, but I was stumbling about on stumbleupon.com this afternoon, and, as so often happens when I'm fooling around on my much loved Internet, one link led to another (which led to another which led to another.  You get the picture).  I ended up coming across some pretty neat water-related stuff and thought, well, if I'm going to be around here posting right now, anyway, then I might as well go ahead and share this stuff which, to me, matters, hoping that it might be of interest to at least a few of you, as well.  Anyway, the first link had a Mother's Day focus to it, so, if I were going to post it at all, it was going to have to be today or tomorrow.  So, in two separate posts, I'm going to give you some links, a few pictures and videos with maybe an excerpted paragraph, here and there.  If you feel like reading further, I've supplied you with some of the links which excited me and I'd be happy for you to click on them and learn more, yourselves-- if you have the inclination.


"Muniyamma waited hours to collect water each day, which usually amounted to only three or four pots. She regularly missed work waiting in line, further stressing a meager family budget. Because the public tap couldn’t meet all of their water needs, other family members took turns collecting contaminated water from agricultural farm lands more than a mile away.

When she learned about Water.org’s WaterCredit program and how she could take out a small loan at a low interest rate to get clean water right at her doorstep, Muniyamma took action. In fact, she was the first person in her village to take out a WaterCredit loan, paving the way for others to follow…."
http://water.org/2011/05/mothersday/


On that same page, there was an internal link "Digging the Well is the Easy Part" which caught my attention and which I'd urge you to check out, yourselves.  I keyed in on it because the more I've been learning about water issues, the more I've been writing back and forth with people at Ryan's Well Foundation,* and the more I've been researching to find the best water organizations because I want to include at least one or two in my will, the more I've come to realize that that's exactly right.  Turns out that it's all the planning, the empowering, the training, and the catalyzing of the local communities along with the incredibly crucial follow-up which ultimately determines whether some of these great sounding water projects are going to end up being great at all.  Or not.


" Everyone enjoys celebrations – and what could be a greater cause for celebration than gaining access to clean water for the first time in your community’s history? The “opening” of a new well ushers in tremendous improvements and transformations in a community, and it is an occasion that involves much ceremony and celebration.  But the celebration day is only one moment in time. The most important days are those leading up to the event and those that follow it…."

*I feel the same kind of gratitude to Ryan's Well Foundation for their raising my consciousness about water issues and for their "expanding my humanity" as I wrote that I feel towards both Kiva and Greg Mortenson.  It's a really almost inexpressively big feeling in me, that gratefulness I feel to those who help to make me more aware, more caring, and occasionally and with more than a little luck, perhaps even a slightly more decent human being than I would have been had they not come into my life.

[Jill]

This stuff I love.  
I love bright creative murals dressing up otherwise sometimes pretty bleak cityscapes, anyway.  I love the fact that this organization, the Estria Foundation, is not only including but is galvanizing youth to get involved, to learn to care about water issues.  It makes the issue personal for the kids because it has them be the artists who are creating the murals that are being painted to make other people care about water issues.  


It’s a visual storytelling project in which graffiti writers explore the current worldwide water crisis that’s principally impacting communities of color and the Global South.


And it becomes obvious when you listen to some of the kids talk in the videos, that that wonderful passion that young people have for things that matter to them, that it's very definitely been harnessed here.  A passion for water.  For taking care of it.  For valuing it.  For sharing it.


With their consciousnesses raised, these kids have learned to care about water and will, I believe, continue caring about it.  And they'll care about it for themselves and their families, and better yet, they'll care about it, I'd be willing to bet, for strangers on the other side of the world, too.  And that's how there gets to be hope in the world.  At least, that's how there gets to be hope in the world for me.
http://www.good.is/post/a-mural-in-east-l-a-paints-history-of-water-in-california/




Estria Foundation Address the Water Crisis With 10 Murals in 10 Cities


So far, the campaign has been successful.... estimates that well over 100 people showed up before noon to the Oakland paint party alone.  Next up: bringing Water Writes to Hawaii, Arizona, Palestine, El Salvador, Colombia, and the Philippines.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1739436/the-estria-foundation-project-paints-our-way-through-the-water-crisis

[Jill]

I keep thinking I’m going to stop, and actually, I keep wanting to stop.  But then I come across things like this.  


At first glance, it looked as though it were some kind of marketing tool for a particular charity, charity: water, and that maybe it would be of interest only to people who had a particular feeling for Central Africa.  That, and the fact that even for me, most articles and videos about water are pretty dry (which is a play on words but also happens to be true for most of us laypeople) had me on the ready to pause it and leave it very early on.  But it turned out that this 15 plus minute-long video ended up striking me as so captivating, as so powerful and effective and of such incredibly universal significance, that it was as though I almost couldn’t help myself from wanting to share it, from wanting to spread the word of it.    


That I felt that way after I, personally, initially shook my figurative head at the thought of taking as long as 15 minutes to watch almost any Internet video, that I kept going after I realized that the first 3 minutes and 50 seconds of it I’d already posted here (I recognized the music and the little boy human drill), and that I almost didn’t watch it at all because it ostensibly dealt only with bringing water to one relatively confined area of the world meant that it really Really had to engage and hold my interest for me to have stuck with it and chosen to watch the whole thing.  There’s a chance that a few of you out there may end up wanting to do the same.   As you please.

WATER AS LUXURY…..


EDIT: Speaking of water, as I’m happily enamoured of markets of all kinds, I came across a pic a couple of days ago of something/s that can be found in water, at least in some water, somewhere, though this truly fabulous photo happened to have been shot at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo.  I couldn’t paste the pic here, directly, but if you click on this link, I think it will take you to it straightaway.  I loved it.  It’s the small things in life….


As an aside, soon after I saw Charmaine’s post, I clicked on the link and attempted to make a contribution on Karoline’s Coffee for Water page.  It was more than a little disconcerting to have the website respond that they couldn’t process my attempted donation for lack of sufficient funds (especially because it was a pretty modest amount.).  So, I phoned it in and told the woman who took my information that I wanted to credit it to Karoline’s page.  So far, it hasn’t shown up there.  I hope it eventually will.  I wanted to do it, simply, to express my thanks to Karoline for caring and also because as is way-obvious by now, the whole clean drinking water thing is something that matters to me an awful lot.

[cjp1973]

I keep thinking I’m going to stop, and actually, I keep wanting to stop.  But then I come across things like this.  


At first glance, it looked as though it were some kind of marketing tool for a particular charity, charity: water, and that maybe it would be of interest only to people who had a particular feeling for Central Africa.  That, and the fact that even for me, most articles and videos about water are pretty dry (which is a play on words but also happens to be true for most of us laypeople) had me on the ready to pause it and leave it very early on.  But it turned out that this 15 plus minute-long video ended up striking me as so captivating, as so powerful and effective and of such incredibly universal significance, that it was as though I almost couldn’t help myself from wanting to share it, from wanting to spread the word of it.    


That I felt that way after I, personally, initially shook my figurative head at the thought of taking as long as 15 minutes to watch almost any Internet video, that I kept going after I realized that the first 3 minutes and 50 seconds of it I’d already posted here (I recognized the music and the little boy human drill), and that I almost didn’t watch it at all because it ostensibly dealt only with bringing water to one relatively confined area of the world meant that it really Really had to engage and hold my interest for me to have stuck with it and chosen to watch the whole thing.  There’s a chance that a few of you out there may end up wanting to do the same.   As you please.

WATER AS LUXURY…..

thanks Jill....and if any of you are interested KF Karoline has a "Coffee for Water" Page!  Will you give up coffee for a day and do something wonderful with they saved money..Check it out!