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CWS Fellowship Staff

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I often blog about the awesome staff we have here at CWS, who work full-time both in the States and in Ghana. However, there is another special group of CWS team members who don’t get as much blog love: our amazing part-time translators that help us during the Fellowship Program Sessions.

The CWS Fellowship Staff: Wahab (full-time), Amin (Fellowship Translator), TJ (full-time), Peter (full time), Sam, Shak (full time), ME, Jaleel (Fellowship Translator), Ayesha (Fellowship Translator), Nestor (Fellowship Translator), Mohammed (Fellowship Translator), and Stephanie (Fellowship Leader)

This winter, we were lucky enough to have 5 amazing individual join our team as translators for the Fellows: Amin, Jaleel, Ayesha, Nestor, and Mohammed. These guys and gal did such a great job working with the Fellows in the field. Many of their days were very long, and very tedious (imagine translating for a team of 4 people all day long in the hot sun!), but every translator always came back from the field with a smile on his or her face. When asked about their overall “high” of the trip, the Fellows almost always say the relationship they formed with their translators.

Amin, Jaleel, Ayesha , Nestor, and Mohammed – we can not thank you enough for your hard work this winter! The Fellowship Program would not have been possible with you and definitely would not have been as enjoyable without your positive attitudes and endlessly entertaining antics. You are such a valuable part of the CWS team!

And they’re off!

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I can’t believe that this day is already here! Early this morning, the 9 CWS translators and I waved goodbye as the two buses filled with the 2012 Winter Fellows pulled out of the Tamale station and headed for Accra. And with that, our biggest Winter Fellowship Program ever has come to a close.

The 2012 Winter Fellows with their Fellowship Leaders and Translators right before they loaded on the bus for Accra (not pictured: Jasdeep and Ashley who were getting egg sandwiches 🙂 )

Thanks to this amazing group of people (and the family and friends that supported their fundraising efforts!!), 4,500 people in rural Ghana now have access to safe drinking water. Before the Fellows’ arrival, every single one of these people were fetching their drinking water from highly contaminated, very turbid, surface water sources called  “dugouts”, which are shared with the community’s livestock. These dugouts are man-made ponds that fill with rainwater during the rainy season, and sit stagnant during the dry months, getting more and more contaminated as time passed.  Now these 9 new villages have permanent access to safe drinking water and 18 new women also have a new source of income – their CWS water business!

This session of Fellows were such a joy to work with! From day 1 it was clear to me and the rest of the CWS staff that they were a really special group. They were inquisitive and interested; passionate about their projects; extremely caring and compassionate when working in their villages; and, most importantly, SUCH a blast!!

Alex, Laura, Matt, Walter, Jasdeep, Ashley, Whitney, Zander, Michelle, Peter, Janelle P, Sarah C, Mark, Brianan, Larissa, Nate, Emma, Janelle T, Hannah, Lindsey, Asia, Luke, Kelly, Caitlin M, Katie, Brittany, Caitlin R, Boyd, Tim, Janna, Kristen, Sarah J, and Melissa,

Sam, Stef, Kathryn, and I have had such a wonderful time getting to know each of you! We all just can’t wait to see what amazing things you do with your futures. Thank you for spending your winter break with us in Ghana – you have helped change the lives of so many people!

Safe Travels!

-Kate

ps – I realize that we still need to post Team B’s “voices from the field.” Their post is currently with them, on the bus to Accra but we will get it up soon! Don’t worry Ashley, Jasdeep, Walter and Whitney’s family and friends, you will hear their story soon!

A New Website For CWS!

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Thank you to everyone who voted for CWS in Jack Rabbits’s Carrots for a Cause  contest! It was amazing to see all of the Facebook posts and tweets by you guys and we really appreciated your support! Although we didn’t win the new website by Jack Rabbit we have some exciting news:

Another web development company called Cloud Construct noticed all of the commotion we were causing on Facebook and graciously offered to take on CWS as their 2012 Community Service Project!

Cloud Construct does amazing work and we could not be more excited to work with them next year! We can’t wait to be able to better showcase our impact though a new and improved website!

CWS Benefit: Success!

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The First Annual Community Water Solutions Benefit was a huge success! We had such a great time celebrating CWS’ first 3 years and raised $10,000 for our cause!  We can’t wait to share the awesome photos by April K!

We’d like to thank all of the amazing people who helped to make this event possible, especially our supporting sponsors: Eaton Vance Investments and Foley Hoag, LLC; our awesome performers: Sid Sriram, Overboard, and the LE Project; our great beverage sponsors: The Boston Beer Company, Trader Joes, Bullard’s Market and Package Store, Palumbo Liquors, Upper Falls Wine and Liquors, Hanover Wine and Spirits, and the Medfield Wine Shoppe; Warren Anderson for putting together both of the awesome CWS Videos; all of our amazing donors who contributed items to the silent auction; the incredibly hardworking event committee: Sarah Wood, Mike Kearney, Sarah Fletcher, Karla Franco, Guillermo Guitierrez, and Vanessa Green; and of course, the W Hotel who generously donated the event-space and were wonderful to work with.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone who attended the Benefit. It was so great to share this special evening with all of you. We are so grateful for your support!

Couldn’t make the event last Thursday? Check out the video from the event and learn all about the impact CWS has made in Ghana and then apply for the winter fellowship program and join us in Ghana!

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/26789906 w=400&h=300]

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!

Scaling-Up

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Community Water Solutions implemented our first water business in June 2008 in the village of Kasaligu in the Northern Region of Ghana.

7 months later, in January of 2009, we opened our second water business in Nyamaliga.

9 months later, in October 2009 we opened our third water business Jargiu.

After a successful holiday season of fundraising and with the help of our 2010 Summer Fellows, we opened four new water businesses during the first half of 2010, in Cheko, Gbong, Gidanturu, and Wambong.

We’ve spent the past two and half years slowly expanding, learning new things from each village, and slightly modifying our approach based on these lessons. We’ve learned a lot about fundraising, about building a non-profit, and about harnessing the enthusiasm and knowledge of willing volunteers.

We still have a lot to learn.

But, we now have the experience and resources to finally start scaling-up, and we’re planning to do it quickly! There are about 900,000 people in the Northern Region of Ghana (and 884 million around the world!) without clean drinking water, and we’re really excited to start making a significant dent in that number!

This November (as in right now!) CWS is implementing three new water businesses in the villages of Kampong, Galizengu, and Nyanguripe. By the end of December, we will be in two more.  By February 2011, with the help of the 2011 Winter Fellows we will be in a total of 19 villages in Northern Region Ghana. In just three months, we are going to more than double to the amount of people we serve and we have no plans of slowing down!

Of course, the scale-up of CWS would not have been possible without your support. I would like to send out a big

THANK YOU

to everyone who has supported CWS over the past two years. We would especially like to thank the Public Service Center and the Legatum Center at MIT for funding our first two pilot villages, as well as our awesome village sponsors: Volunteer Shredding (Jarigu), iContact (Gbong), an anonymous friend (Cheko), Colleen and Jeff Clopeck (Gidanturu), The Medfield FitGirls (Kampong), Gerry and Judy O’Connell (Gilanzegu), The Nolans (Nyanguripe), The Reids (one of the villages for December), and the CWS Facebook Causes Team (the second village in December). Finally, I would also like to thank Jay Roche whose generous donation helped us to purchase the CWS Truck (without which, this scale-up would not be possible.) THANK YOU ALL!

Here are some pictures from our work over the past week in Kampong and Galinzegu. I have taken A LOT more, but the internet has been slow and sporadic, so these will have to do for now! I’ll keep trying to put more up on this blog as soon as possible!

A cow, standing in and drinking water from the Kampong dugout - the only source of drinking water in this village.
Peter and Shak building the water treatment center in Kampong
Little boys in Galinzegu who helped us build the polyank stand
Amina and Samata, the two women in Gilanzegu who will be running at the CWS water business. They are awesome! (and LOVE getting their picture taken!)
Finishing up the polytank stand in Gilanzegu.
A garaou of dugout water in Gilanzegu. This is the water that people in the village are currently drinking.

Gene Mitchell and Lisa Danielson Win 2nd Annual CWS 5K!

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The 2nd Annual Community Water Solutions 5K was great success, drawing over 100 participants and raising $2,500 for our work in Ghana! The weather was perfect, and the runners and walkers all enjoyed a beautiful Nantucket day. Gene Mitchell was the first male finisher with a time of 16:41 and Lisa Danielson took first place for the females, finishing in 19:47. You can download the rest of the results on the official race website.

The Inquirer and Mirror, a local Nantucket newspaper, took some great pictures which you can view on their sport’s page photo gallery.

Thank you to everyone who came out and ran, walked or volunteered! We are so grateful for your support! A special thanks to our amazing sponsors, without whom this great event would not have been possible: Nantucket Health Club, Nantucket Pure, Bartlett’s Farm, Vineyard Vines, Triple 8 Vodka, Young’s Bicycle Shop, dune, and the Sunken Ship.

A Successful First Fellowship Program

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The CWS Fellows, now seasoned development veterans

The CWS Fellowship was a great success for all those involved. The Fellows learned a lot about water treatment, experienced an insight into what life in development is like, and became great friends, with each other, with their translators, Shak and Peter, and with the villagers in the process. Most importantly, they left behind a permanent business which will provide access to clean drinking water and improve the quality of life for a village of almost a thousand people. The CWS community grew by five incredible individuals this summer and we are grateful for the opportunity to have shared our experience with them. We hope Amaia, Ben, James, Molly and Sarah will return to visit us and Wambong one day. They will always be a part of CWS and as we support and monitor the Wambong center over the next year, we will continue to update the Fellows on the success of their project. We are excited and look forward to many more Fellowship Programs in the future and would like to thank our Fellows once more for helping us shape and improve the program for our next Fellows.

Thank you,
-The CWS Team