The CWS team would like to thank all of the friends and family of Ron Brown and Margaret Cannella who donated to CWS in honor of their big day! We’ve received so many generous donations since the wedding on January 30th, raising more $2,200 for our cause! Thank you for your support and congratulations Ron and Margaret!
Fit Girls Support CWS
One of the awesome new village sponsors that committed to raising money for CWS at the Medfield Fundraiser, was the Medfield Fit Girls, led by Fit Girls founder, Sarah Nixon. Fit Girls is a fitness program for girls in 4th and 5th grade that uniquely combines training for a 5k race with reading and community outreach. Each year, the Fit Girls choose a charity to support, and this year they chose CWS!
The Medfield Fit Girls launched their Safe Water Campaign last week and sent us a few pictures from their first meeting! We are so grateful for their support and so excited to be partnering with such an awesome organization! Thank you Fit Girls, we’re looking forward to working with you this spring!
Monitoring in Gidanturu
This week we spent some time monitoring in Gidanturu. Its always so fun to see people using their safe storage containers in their homes. We were very excited about our monitoring results and are so proud of Birami and Mariam, who have been doing an excellent job working at the water treatment center!
Opening Day in Gidanturu
Its only Tuesday, but our team has been so busy this week it feels like it should be Friday! We spent Sunday and Monday passing out safe storage containers to every family in Gidanturu, and training Mariam and Bariami (sp?), the two women who were nominated by their community to run the CWS water business. Then today, we opened for business! Over 90% of the village showed up to buy water, and we even saw a few more people headed to the center as we were leaving (unfortunately we had run out of water due to a leaky polytank, so we closed before those people were able to fetch. Have no worries, the polytank is fixed and more water will be ready tomorrow!) A big THANK YOU to Colleen and Jeff Clopeck for sponsoring this water business!
Gidanturu is home to many fun animals! They actually have crocodiles in their dugout and pet monkeys!
On our way home from Gidanturu we passed an overturned Coke truck – the road was COVERED in broken glass. I had to take a pic!
Hard at work at village number SIX!
I am excited to announce that we have started setting up our SIXTH water business in the village of Gidanturu! This water business is sponsored by Colleen and Jeff Clopeck, who have been incredible CWS supporters over the past 1.5 years!
Gidanturu is located on the Salaga Rd (the same road as Jarigu, Cheko, Nyamaliga, and Gbong) about 90 minutes outside of Tamale. Before purchasing the truck, it would have been impossible for us to even consider a village this far away – the taxi fees would have been astronomical and the Salaga road turns to dirt shortly after passing Gbong which makes it very difficult to drive on without 4 wheel drive. This village is the home to ~650-700 people who were desperately in need of safe drinking water, so we are so glad that we have the truck and are able to partner with them!
We are planning to open the water business early next week. Here are some pictures from the past few days:
During our first visit to Gidanturu I noticed that many of the children were wearing funny looking hats. After looking closely, I noticed that the children were raising money for Haiti at their school! I thought that this was SO amazing! Back home, we have things like crowdfunding platforms which make raising money on a large scale so easy, and yet this tiny village in rural Ghana – that we have a hard time reaching in our 4 wheel-drive truck, where people live on less than $1 per day, were also raising money for Haiti! How cool is that?! (and they weren’t just wearing the hats, they were really taking donations!)
2010 Summer Fellows!
CWS is excited to announce our first team of Summer Fellows! Congratulations to Molly Barrett, Sarah Britz, Amaia Noguera, Ben Powell, and James Little
This June, the Fellows will be traveling to Ghana were they will learn about the global water crisis and implement a CWS water business in a rural village. Interested in supporting their trip? Check out Molly, Ben, or Sarah‘s fundraising pages!!
Every donation makes a difference!
In addition to helping Community Water Solutions provide clean water for rural villages in Ghana, your donations help us pay our wonderful Ghanaian staff, who do everything from translating to implementing water business on their own. Last week was very exciting for Peter, our project manager, because he had finally saved up enough money to purchase a plot of land. Peter is the first person in his family to own land – his parents and grandparents have always rented homes in town. He is planning to eventually build a compound on this plot where his whole extended family can live.
Peter has been working very hard for CWS over the past 15 months and has been very responsible – saving his salary little by little. He did not tell his family about his plan to purchase land, and surprised them last Wednesday by driving them out to his plot and showing them his deed! His parents were so proud of him and so are we!
This is just one example of how your donations can really make a difference in the lives of people in Ghana. Thank you so much for your support thus far!!
If you are interested in making a donation, please visit www.communitywatersolutions.org/support.html
Free Water for the Schools
Recently, CWS decided to provide free safe storage containers and free water to the schools in our villages. Safe drinking water is so important, and we wanted to be sure that the children had access to clean water throughout the day. We also hope that by teaching the kids at the school about the importance of safe water and safe storage, that they will pass on the lessons to their parents and siblings at home. Here are some pictures from our water lessons in the Gbong school yesterday:
I took these next pictures in the lab last weekend and just had to share them with everyone. First, we have a water sample from the Gbong dugout:
And here is a sample of water from someone in Gbong’s safe storage container:
Quite a difference huh? Remember, the “after” water originally came from the dugout – 24 hours later + alum and chlorine and it safe to drink. Pretty awesome!
And on a completely un-related note, I just finished the book Born to Run By Christopher McDougall, which combined both of my favorite pastimes in Ghana: reading and running. I was inspired to snap a few pics during one of evening runs:
After reading Born to Run I was tempted to try running barefoot! But then I chickened out and laced up these bad boys:
Tamale may not be as hilly as the Cooper Canyons in Mexico, but I still think the Tarahumara would be impressed by the Terrain:
(I love how the blurry iPhone photo makes it seem like I was running super fast!)
Meet Raffie
Meet Raffie, CWS’ new guard-puppy. Raffie used to belong to Shak, but his house is not surrounded by a fence and he was worried that Raffie would get hit by a car (her brother died this way a few months ago). The CWS office has a big yard and is fenced-in by a big cement wall – the perfect place for Raffie!
Raffie enjoys:
Rolling around in the grass
KenKey and Fish
Wachee (rice and beans) – but only if it comes from a street vendor and is covered in grease (my steamed white rice and canned beans did NOT go over well).
Biting ankles
Getting her belly rubbed
Jumping up on people
Raffie does not enjoy
Dog food
World Water Day!
Yesterday was World Water Day, and we made sure to celebrate this special day with our entire CWS Family here in Ghana!
We started our celebration bright and early by opening our fifth water business in Gbong! It was so much fun to open a CWS water business ON World Water Day, even though most of the people in Gbong did not understand what we were talking about when Shak and I kept cheering for WWD! We had an amazing turnout, with 94% of the village showing up to buy water. Fati and Amina, the CWS ladies in Gbong did a great job selling and treating the water! Here are some pics from the morning:
The one hiccup was a few dozen leaky taps – but Shak and I were able to fix them all by the end of the morning. Thank you iContact for sponsoring the water business at Gbong!
Later that afternoon, we had a party for the entire CWS family here at the office. Shak and I cooked (well, I chopped veggies while Shak cooked!) while Peter went to pick up everyone. Everyone except Fati from Kasaligu was able to make it to the party. The ladies were a little shy at first, but once they got to know each other, they started to share stories and offer each other advice. It was such a great experience. For example, the ladies in Cheko mentioned that some people in their village don’t like the smell of chlorine in the water. Alhassan, from Jarigu, explained to them that the chlorine was the most important step in the water treatment center, and that in a few weeks, people won’t even notice the smell. He went on to explain his experience in Jarigu, and how the chlorine smell is the smell of “clean water” so of course it is going to smell different than the “dirty water” from the dugout. This entire conversation happened while I was in the kitchen helping Shak, and when I came back, Soufoo (who can speak a little english) told me about it. I was thrilled! We missed you Mike, Chuck, Vanessa and Peter A!
