Portland Club Clean water Project

Posted by Meredith Small 
 

Following up on Meredith Small's presentation at the meeting here's the clean water project her "other" club is working on.

Portland Rotary Santa Barbara Honduras *Clean Water Campaign

Portland Rotary, in partnership with Freeport Rotary, Cape Elizabeth/South Portland Rotary and 18 other clubs have developed a project to provide clean drinking water to families in Honduras by providing a BioSand filter, one per household to remove virtually all waterborne diseases.

NO RURAL DRINKING WATER IS SAFE IN HONDURAS

In many of the homes of rural Honduras, there are no pipes, no valves, and no taps. The children who drink this water get very sick. They suffer diarrhea and dysentery, and some die...

  • 50,000 children die from water borne diseases every year.
  • 80% of illnesses detected in Honduras originate in contaminated water supplies.
  • 78% of the rural population in Honduras depend on contaminated surface water.

Water treatment filters for these families can help this critical need for clean water, and we at Portland Rotary are working hard to bring clean and safe drinking water to needy families in Santa Barbara, Honduras.

PROJECT GOAL

Install 1,875 Bio-Sand water filters to provide sus-tainable potable water to homes in the villages throughout the region of Santa Barbara, Honduras. Working with local health officials, the project will deliver filters to serve 18 rural villages and provide clean water to over 10,000 people.

To achieve this ambitious goal, Portland Rotary and Freeport Rotary have spearheaded a group of Rotary clubs across the US and Honduras as well as attract funds from the Rotary Foundation  to raise to the total project cost of $163,000.

Portland Rotarians will be traveling to Honduras to encourage the project as it develops and to help the local people manufacture and install filters.  This will be a "hands on" project where the members who travel to Honduras will directly impact the lives of the people receiving the gift of clean water.

Go to http://www.portlandrotary.org/hundurascleanwaterproject.cfm for more information on the remarkable sand filters.