Day 1: Counting The Days Until Everyone Has Water

Day one of many: Today is day one because it is the first day of this project becoming a full time business. I have decided to dedicate at least 40 hours a week to this. Today consisted of working on a logo and wire-framing the website. There is a long road ahead of me on this but it is a road worth taking.

NADTD is a non profit aimed at bringing piped clean water to small and medium sized cities in developing countries.

This is the beginning of a long journey. The website and entire set up should be up and running by the end of the week. Next week starts the contact with the hotels down in Bavaro to start getting them up to speed on what we are doing.

With Water Life Flows

Video By: Dan Walker. Check out his other work sometime by looking him up on facebook. facebook.com/dan.walker.552

Water: Big Cities Big Problems

What are we doing for cities and towns of 10,000 people. Or 20,000 people? Digging wells to give them water to drink isn’t enough. These are growing cities. If we are to help them grow out of poverty we have to do more.

It is not feasible to dig wells and say it is good enough for these people. A town called Mao, in Chad, has roughly 20,000 people. For clean water they have to still walk to a water tower to collect it. Can you imagine living in a town with 20,000 people and having to walk to a water tower just to get water?There are other options. Better solutions for this problem. While the options will not be easy or cheap solutions they provide the best hope to people all over the world.

Piping water into homes, bringing it closer to where they need it so they can focus on education and being productive citizens. That is what is needed. No more having to walk and fill a jug for clean water. No more wells to walk to in the town center. Just clean drinking water where you want it, when you want it.

We must be mindful of the water crisis that we are under. Clean water is a finite source, one that must be carefully measured and watched. Sometimes an aquifer or water source is not large enough to supply a town with water. There are many places like this all over the world. Dams wont always be the best solution. We must find new ways to do this.

Much like L.A. is not self-sustaining with their water supply, neither are most places in the middle of a desert in Africa. We can find a solution, we must find one, but first thing is first and we must start giving these towns the water they need in a clean, safe, cheap, sustainable way. 

What's Next; Water For All:

I haven't gotten a chance to update the blog in a few weeks. It's not that I have stopped working on the project it's that the project has taken off so much that I haven't had a chance sit down and write. Life sometimes gets in the way of so many things.

Since being back home I have tried to work on the water station as much as possible and update some things on the drawings as well as create a video about my experience. The video seems to be further along then the drawings... and we start filming tomorrow for the video. Since being home I have taken an active role in a group called Enactus IPFW and we are currently gearing up for a competition in Chicago next weekend. We are presenting the water station project in front of a panel of judges. I hope to use this time to raise awareness of the problem as well as see about getting more people on board with helping out.

One of the biggest challenges I have had with this project is finding people who feel called or lead to help. This project is a massive undertaking, one I can not do alone. Yet for some reason I feel like the whole design and implementation part will be on my own. I do hope to find at least one to two more people who feel called to help solve the worlds problems to help with this project.

I promise I will start updating this more and get more information out there on whats going on.

Water: World Water Day

What does World Water Day mean to me. It means a day of living without bottled water, without tap water, without showers, without indoor plumbing. Living like over 1 billion people live every day. I am blessed by the resources I have been given at my disposal. The Declaration of Independance sums up best what I believe, "all men are created equal." That quote has always stuck with me throughout my life.

This Friday isn't about the statistics. If we listened to statistics then we would believe that over 1 billion people live without access to clean water, this is misleading. The Dominican Republic is a place where 87 percent of the country has access to clean water, yet they can not drink it from their taps. They have to go and buy bottled water from a store and that is considered access. The city supply that is piped into peoples homes is only available 8 hours a day 3 days a week, if they are lucky. The city supply also is full of harmful bacteria and particles that make you second guess even washing your hands with it. There is more work to be done to improve the water in this country before it should be considered clean by human standards.

World Water Day is about remembering the history of the clean water movement and those who have given their lives to this cause. I read a story today about Perveen Rahman today and her work in the poor districts of Pakistan. She went against the flow and helped bring low cost sanitation methods to Karachi, Pakistan and in the process improved the lives of over a million people. A few hours after I first read about her I head that she was shot dead in the same community that she dedicated her life to improve. This World Water Day should be made in her honor for the work she did to improve the lives of so many. I am sure every last one of us in the water business look up to her for the work she was able to do. 

So I realize I havent said much about what World Water Day is. It's a simple idea. It is the one day a year we protest the fact that so many people have no access to clean water or have to relay on bottles of water. We protest by getting together and talking about the issues we face and how we can solve them. We also give up drinking bottles of water, some are going so far as to give up water for the entire day. Some are giving up using indoor plumbing for the day to protest unsanitary conditions a lot of the world faces. Quite a few of us are also giving up showering as a way to protest. No matter how you protest it, it's all for the same cause. Raise awareness on this Friday March 22nd and let everyone know why your protesting. Join us and help us remember Perveen Rahman. 

Water: When It's More Than Just Water

I am working in Latin America more then I will work in Africa. The challenges are the same and the risks of getting water is dire. While most Dominicans do not have to travel far for water they do have to turn to prostitution or sorting through trash to earn enough money to pay for water. This is normal behavior for many in Latin America yet it is something that isn't talked about much. Solving the water issue can solve many more problems. Check out this video from Charity: Water and get involved and do everything you can to insure that this is a problem that is fixed in our generation.

Water: World Water Day March 22nd

I went to the store today to buy some basic necessities. I decided to walk down the soda isle to grab something to drink. It happened to be the same isle as the one where they keep bottled water. I was shocked to see that most of the bottled water was sold out. Think about that for a minute. In a country where clean water comes out of every tap it is hard to keep bottled water on the shelf.

As a whole we are a very wasteful country. We go out of our way to create waste. We will drink bottled water instead of grabbing a cup and getting water from the tap. There are places in this world who are begging for having the same luxuries as we do. Having the ability to go to the sink and get some water is a foreign concept for most of the world.

In the Dominican Republic I could buy a Dasani bottle of water, 20oz, for 10 pesos. That works out to about 25 cents per bottle. They keep the price there low because so many people use the bottles and it keeps people like me from coming in and investing in the city water supply. In the US we pay $1.25 per bottle from a vending machine. It is mind boggling why we pay so much more in the US for the same water.

After spending a week in a country with around 8 million people, and none of them are able to drink water from a tap, it strikes me that we have the same habits as them even though we have clean water. We could easily grab a reusable bottle when on the run instead of using bottled water. At the very least we could start to recycle the bottles we use so they wont end up in a land fill. One of the biggest challenges we face in the Dominican Republic is changing the way people classify trash and recyclables. Educating people about what can be recycled and why its bad to just throw it on the side of the road is not as easy as it seems. Two people I met in Santiago are currently working on a project to help educate the people on how to classify recyclables. Time will tell how they do, however, they know how hard it is to changes peoples perspectives.

The task before us is difficult but not impossible. During my time there I noticed that taxi drivers help keep the cities moving. Why can't we use that to our advantage and have advertisements about recycling and basic sanitation in every taxi. This seems like its too easy of a solution, it is because the taxi's are all government owned. Getting them to agree to anything like that means they have to see a benefit to them. In a country with little regulation that all goes unenforced getting them to see how it can benefit them personally is a tall order. This idea to give the island clean water to every house is not just about that. It is about improving and changing the education of an entire culture.

For World Water Day this Friday I am asking that no one uses bottled water for a day, and recycle every bottle you see. If we could do that for one day it would make a huge difference. Simple changes can add up over time.