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From a CWS Fellow to the Director of US Operations & Development…

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Born in New York, raised in Maryland, a Clemson graduate, a love for helping people and drive to make a difference. It is my second day as a member of the CWS Team and I couldn’t be more excited! I have found the job that I am extremely passionate about and an organization I am so proud to be a part of.

I graduated Clemson in 2008 with a Bachelor’s in Health Science with a concentration in Promotion & Education and a minor in Psychology. Upon graduation I was able to spend three months in South Africa as Project Materials Developer for a non-profit located within Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital. I was able to gain insight to the current health issues lying within Africa and the social aspects surrounding those concerns.  I had fallen in love with international development. I had returned back to Maryland with the drive to conquer the field and with a job market with very little options. I didn’t let that discourage me and continued to stay focused with what I ultimately wanted.

In the Winter of 2011 I was selected as a Fellow for Community Water Solutions. I was thrilled to get back to Africa and to get first-hand experience on the current global water crisis. In my first day in Ghana I was shocked at the dire need for water improvement. Seeing children dip their hands in water that animals defecate in and water bottles filled with water more murky then our rainy day street puddles hurt my heart. It didn’t take long for us to see the how greatly we were needed to help give these people something so simple—Clean water. And the most amazing thing, it would only take three weeks to do so.

The Ghanaians greeted us with arms wide open. I was amazed at the great sense of community and the way they looked out for one another with a “no man left behind” attitude. They took the matter very seriously and were there every step of the process. In completing our time in Ghana I left the village, Chanaayilli, with great confidence that the community would sustain their water treatment center and provide a clean water source for their community indefinitely.

In my return to the US I knew CWS was something I wanted to stay a part of. I had seen that the project had truly worked—there was no doubt in my mind that CWS would continue to grow and succeed in bringing people clean water. When I was offered a position on the CWS Team I knew this was an opportunity I could NOT pass up! I am so excited to see the places CWS will go and so proud to be a part of it!

-Sam

The 2011 Summer Fellows!

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Community Water Solutions is excited to announce the 28 newest members of our team: the 2011 Summer Fellows! We are so excited to be working with young people who are so passionate and enthusiastic about development work!

Abigail Opoku-Agyemang

Abigail Watson

Alyssa Wolfington

Anne  Glancy

Benjamin C Anderson

Cassandra Haines

Chris Sweeney

Christina Devine

Christina Duell

Christine Horner

Heather Todak

Hudson Cavanagh

David Moon

Ianthe Metzger

Javier Apalategui

Jess Bowen

Karina Hunt

Kelsey Dickman

Kendra Gray

Matt Phillips

Matthew Haun

Meaghan O’Brien

Nadiah Younus

Nathan Holcomb

Sharifa Felix

Stephanie Bloom

William Barkalow

Xi Chen

Welcome to the team 2011 Summer Fellows!

An Exciting St. Patrick’s Day for CWS!

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! Today is a really special day for CWS because we have two very exciting announcements:

First, we wanted to thank everyone who donated to CWS on our GlobalGiving site yesterday an joined our 2nd annual Give a Day Campaign! We raised over $3,800 including $885 in matched funds from GlobalGiving! We were overwhelmed with all of your support, whether it was spreading the word about GG’s 30% match on your Facebook pages, or actually donating to our cause. We are so grateful for our awesome family of CWS supporters! Thank you!

Secondly, we are so excited to announce the newest member of the CWS Team….

 

Meet Sam Derrick!

Sam was a 2011 Winter Fellow and is now joining our team as the Director of US Operations and Development! We are thrilled to be working with Sam and are looking forward to April when she officially starts this role!

Join CWS’ 2nd Annual Give A Day Program!

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Give a Day on March 16 – and earn a 30% match!

Community Water Solutions is reaching out to our friends and supporters because on March 16, our partner Global Giving offering a 30% match on all donations up to $1,000 per donor to CWS made through the Global Giving website.

We’d like to use this special opportunity to invite you to join our second annual “Give-a-Day Program!” You can make an immediate positive impact on the health and prosperity of rural village communities in Africa by contributing your compensation from a day of work.

By Giving a Day, you’ll have a chance to participate in the hard work and team spirit that our partners and colleagues at CWS enjoy week in and week out.

Here’s what the CWS team in Ghana can achieve in a day:

  • Amina, who operates the treatment center in Gbong, can produce 400 liters of clean, safe drinking water for her village
  • Peter, a CWS Project Manager, can educate 50 households on water health & safety
  • Soufoo, our Chief Engineer, can build a new treatment center using cement, sand, and other supplies from the market in Tamale
  • Shak, another CWS Project Manager, can distribute safe storage containers to an entire village

What can you achieve in a day?

By contributing your compensation from a day at your regular work, combined with the 30% match from Global Giving, you’ll be moving us closer to our goal of eradicating the need for safe drinking water in Northern Region Ghana. We’d be thrilled to have you join us!

How to contribute

Vist the CWS Global Giving Page (not the CWS website!) on March 16 and donate with a credit card. GlobalGiving is giving away $75,000 in matching funds, so the earlier in the day that you donate the better! Once, GlobalGiving has reached their $75,000 limit, they will not longer be matching donations. See below for more terms and conditions.

Thanks so much for you continued support!

GlobalGiving’s Terms and Conditions:

  • Matching is applied up to $1,000 per donor per project on March 16, 2011 between 12:01am and 11:59 pm EST (GMT-4) until matching funds run out;
  • There is $75,000 available matching funds;
  • Projects must be approved and live on the GlobalGiving.org website by March 15th ;
  • Only online donations (credit card or paypal) are eligible for matching.  Donations made by check are not eligible;
  • •    Donations made on www.globalgiving.co.uk or any GlobalGiving corporate sites (including Nike, Global Action Atlas, etc) are NOT eligible for matching.

 

2011 Winter Fellowship Program: The Impact

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If you have been reading our “voices from the field” series, than you have gotten a small glimpse of the everyday work that our 2011 Winter Fellows completed during their time here in Ghana. You’ve seen how they built polytank stands, danced with the children in their villages, distributed safe storage containers, held village meetings, performed water quality testing in the lab, trained local women how to make water from their local sources safe to drink, and even sampled some traditional Ghanaian food!

The day-to-day work is fun, but sometimes slow; exciting, but often exhausting, and sometimes, its easy to get lost in all of the small details of the project. Looking back over the past 5 weeks, the bottom line is this: the 2011 Winter Fellows provided permanent sources of safe drinking water for over 4,200 people! That is pretty amazing!

 

Team 6: Karla, Sam, Annie and Hannah S.

 

Team 5: Shalyn, Pranav, Lina, and Sarah
Team 7: Eleanor, Rachel, Fabiola, and Sanita
Team 1 :Luke, Heather, Mira, and Catherine
Team 3: Jim, Lauren, Elsie and Kathryn
Team 4: Kevin, Marlene, Chris, and Allie
Team 2: Sarah, Cam, Nate, and Hannah H.

Of course none of the Fellows’ work could have been possible without your support! We’d like to thank all of the parents, teachers, friends, neighbors, churches, community groups, local businesses and everyone else who supported the 2011 Winter Fellows – without all of you, the fellowship teams could not have made such an amazing impact during their time in Ghana! THANK YOU!

Safe Travels Session 2!

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This afternoon, Shak, Peter, TJ, Wahab and I (Kate), said farewell to the Session 2 Fellows, who are off to spend some time exploring the Ghanaian coast before heading back home.  Tamale seems very quiet with all of our winter fellows – we already miss you guys!

For their farewell dinner, our whole group headed to one of our favorite spots in Tamale, Luxury where we enjoyed pizza, mac and cheese, and calabashes of”pinto” (home-brewed beer provided by Shak)! We had a great time reflecting on the entire Fellowship Program.

All Session 2 fellows and Kate at their farewell dinner at Luxury.

Sarah, Pranav, Lina, Karla, Annie, Hannah, Sanita, Fabiola, Rachel, Sam, Shalyn, and Eleanor – We have had such a wonderful time working with you in Ghana this winter.  Our team was constantly impressed by your determination, perseverance, passion and pluck! Your cheerful presence alone has already changed the lives of the hundreds of people in your villages – the clean water that you have provided makes your impact even greater.  I particularly enjoyed your insight during our daily debriefs and based on those conversations, I know that each and every one of you will do some pretty amazing things in the years the come!

Safe Travels!

-Kate (and the rest of the CWS Team!)

Voice from the field: Team 7!

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Opening Day in Chongashe with Team 7!

Saturday was the big day for Team 7! We finally opened our CWS water treatment center in Chongashe! The other two teams opened yesterday so we were anxious to finally see ours in action and it was a HUGE SUCCESS!!! Every household in the village eventually came to collect water.

We set our alarms for 5:30AM so that we could get to our village, which is almost two hours away, in time for early morning water collection. We think that it was the first time this whole month that we’ve actually left on time – “Ghanaian time” is usually at least half an hour behind schedule. We were on the road before 6 AM even though Rachel slept through her alarm and Sanita had to wake her up…

 

Eleanor, Rachel, Sanita, Fabiola and TJ - heading to our village before sunrise!

After days of dreaming about it, we finally stopped at a food stand for egg-bread sandwiches to get a protein boost before the big morning!

 

Ghanaian egg sandwiches, finally!

We arrived in Chongashe and greeted our welcoming committee, AKA a group of 50 children who swarm our truck jumping and clapping whenever we drive in. People brought out drums and we all headed towards the center, the truck loaded with kids and buckets to be filled with water.

Once we got to the center, we still needed to scoop some water from the blue drums and add Aquatabs to the polytank so that we would have as much clean water as possible. Mata and Wasseela, the two women who we had trained to run the center, handled the process as if they had been running it for years. After emptying the blue drums they filled them up immediately and were quick to stir in the alum too.  It was great to see that our training sessions were so effective!

 

Scooping water into the polytank where it will be treated with chlorine

While we waited for the chlorine in the Aquatabs to kick in, the crowd of women holding their new safe storage containers grew and grew! TJ entertained everyone with his awesome drumming, and the music led to a big dance party giving us a taste of traditional dancing!

 

Wahab and Rachel on the drums!
Kids dancing by the water treatment center!

 

TJ showing off his drumming skills!
"traditional"dancing on opening day

By the time the center was ready to open, there were already forty buckets ready to be filled.  We were so excited by the big turnout!  Since we had distributed our safe storage containers in large groups, we were worried that our message hadn’t gotten across to everyone, so it was very encouraging when so many people in the community turned out over the next few hours.  Many families even brought cups to wash out so that they would have designated drinking cups that wouldn’t re-contaminate their new clean water.

 

All of the buckets lined up to fetch water on opening day!

The long line of buckets got hectic at times, but we reassured the ladies that it wouldn’t always be so crazy. There was also some confusion about which bucket was whose and a few problems with leaky buckets, but it all got sorted out in the end. Within a few hours all of the buckets were filled and we were proud that all of our hard work setting up the water treatment center paid off!

The next day we had a day off, so Rachel, Sanita and Eleanor went with TJ and Wahab to the Kintampo Falls for a relaxing and awesome morning.

Then we hurried back to Tamale to finally catch a soccer game in the Stadium. We’ve been waiting all session to see a game there – and even though it took us until half time to figure out which team was Tamale, we were still pumped about the experience.

The view from our seats at the Tamale football game - there wasn't the turnout we had expected....

-Team 7 (Eleanor, Rachel, Sanita and Fabiola)