Chair PP Judy Ross introduced Rotarian Karen McCarthy from the Rotary Club of Ballarat. Karen joined Rotary in Melbourne in 2007, re-joining in 2011 in Ballarat. She is a mother of two and grandmother of three. A previous editor of the club bulletin in 2013/2014 and is currently the editor of the DG "Illuminations" newsletter. Karen came across Aquabox in a story on Facebook in 2013 and is now the only known representative in any district in Australia for Aquabox Australia. Typhoon Haiyan prompted her to act on doing something in her district.
The Aquabox first came to light as an idea for a Rotary project in 1990 over a cup of coffee in Wirksworth in the UK. It was adopted as an official RIBI project in 1992. The boxes were originally made out of ply board.
Rtn Gordon Birch from the Rotary Club of Templetsowe (D9790) saw the project in 1999 whilst on holiday in the UK and brought the idea back to his club, the rest we say is history.
Originally the boxes and contents (including tablets/filters) were sourced from the UK. This has now evolved to sourcing only the tablets and filters from the UK, with the other contents being sourced locally with the boxes being made and stamped in Sydney. In the beginning the boxes were assembled in the garages and houses of Rotarians, and as the project grew more space was required and it is now run from a warehouse in Eltham.
AusAid collaborated with the RC of Eltham to provide a box (contents) that was more suitable to their region; this also included removing the “survival” bag that Asian countries saw as “body bags”
Aquabox is not a long term solution, but provides a community with fresh, clean water for a period of time while long term solutions are put in place.
With 25,000 children a day dying from contaminated water, Karen felt that it was about time she did more than just think about doing “something” and actively started working on this project in November 2013 when Super Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines.
The Aquabox Gold contains 2 filters/tablets sets along with humanitarian aid items producing 2,000 litres of potable water. Cost of $480 each. Aquabox 30 contains 30 sets of tablet/filter sets producing 30,000 litres of potable water. Cost of $750 each.
Aus Aid allow RC of Eltham to store Aquaboxes in their warehouse in Brisbane, closer to the areas that need the aid they provide.
Not many people realise that in the last 5 years 206 Aquaboxes were used in Australia. We now have agreements with Cambodia and the Philippines to pre-locate them in readiness for disasters before they hit. With this region of the world certain “disasters” are relatively predictable in their timing. Disasters are not always large in scale, but one Aquabox can make all the difference to an impacted village of 800 people (500 being children) with their only water source contaminated. Cholera, typhoid, and bilhartzia (and more) are all diseases that can be cleaned from the water making it potable.