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 to everyone that donated to CWS during Global Giving’s Match Day on June 16th – we raised over $4,000 for CWS! We are so grateful for your continued support!
Over the past 18 months CWS has gotten some pretty amazing thank you gifts from the villages that we work in. We have loved them all, but have also found them to be pretty hilarious:
Yams From Nyamaliga - January 2009A big bag of groundnuts (aka peanuts) from Nyamaliga - September 2009A chicken from Gbong - February 2010Eggs from Cheko - May 2010 (and no, they are not for eating, they are for hatching!)
The past couple weeks have been devoted to monitoring, updating my monitoring files (pretty much as fun as it sounds…), preparing for the rainy season, and getting ready for our awesome Fellows who arrive on June 7th! Its hard to take pictures of these tasks, but I managed to snap a few, enjoy! Be prepared for a post with our updated monitoring results soon!
Shak showing the results of our water quality testing to a woman in Gidanturu. We like to do this to show people what happens with the water samples we take from their safe storage containers. Its fun to see their reactions when they see the difference between a test with their "safe water" and the dugout water!Showing the water tests to some cute kiddos!New signboard at Gidanturu - thank you village sponsor, Colleen and Jeff Clopeck!
The next few pictures are from an old Guinea Worm Containment Center. In order to prepare for the rainy season, our team went to check out some rainwater harvesting projects (in two of our villages, the paths to the dugouts, and therefore the water treatment centers, flood during the heavy rains. We are thinking about setting up rainwater harvesting systems to fill the polytanks with rainwater during this time – ill keep you posted!). We stopped by this containment center to look at their rainwater harvesting system and found out that the center had essentially been abandoned. Why? Because there haven’t been ANY Guinea Worm cases in this area in months! Such great news!
Guinea Worm is a horrendous water-related disease that has been endemic in Ghana for years. Due to the amazing Guinea Worm Eradication Campaign, led by the Carter Center, the number of Guinea Worm cases has drastically reduced – especially over the past few years. Shak visited this center in 2008 and said that there were so many patients that they had to put beds on the veranda. Not anymore! As the Carter Center explains on their website:
“Humans are a Guinea worm’s only host, so spread of the disease can be controlled by identifying all cases and modifying human behavior to prevent it from recurring. Once all human cases are eliminated, the disease will be eradicated.”
I recently heard through the volunteer rumor mill that soon, it is going to be announced that Guinea Worm has been eradicated from Ghana!
Since humans are the only host for Guinea worm, these containment centers were built so that infected persons could be effectively treated and the disease could be kept from spreading
Empty Beds - wahoo!Picture on the wall of the Guinea Worm Containment Center advertising the LifeStraw - a point-of-use intervention designed to filter out the water fleas that cause Guinea Worm
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!
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!
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!
Peter, standing on his plot, holding his deed!
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
A nomination was submitted on your behalf for the 2010 Do Something Awards. After reviewing your nomination we want to encourage you to complete the Do Something Awards application. www.dosomething.org/awards
The Do Something Awards identifies exceptional young (25 and under) social entrepreneurs, activists, and community leaders who have made a significant social impact. Do Something Award nominees and winners are the pivotal “do-ers” in their fields and causes. Five nominees will be rewarded with a $10,000 community grant, participation in a live VH1 TV show,media coverage and continued support from DoSomething.org. The grand prize winner will receive $100,000 during the live broadcast.
We have received over 600 nominations, but so far have only recommended 30 of those nominated move to the next step and fill out the award application. While I cannot guarantee that you will be selected as a Do Something Awards Finalist or Nominee, I can guarantee that your application will be reviewed in the internal semi-finalists selection round (typically about 60 out of 700 applications make it to this round).
THANK YOU to whoever nominated CWS for this awesome award! We are honored to be considered!
I just wanted to write a quick Thank You post to everyone who help organize and everyone who attended the CWS Medfield Fundraiser on February 6th. It was a huge success, and we raised over $6,000 for Community Water Solutions! Every little bit can make such a huge difference here in Ghana and we raised much more then we were hoping to!
A special thanks to Jill Moran for teaching me all about planning an event, the Rhythm Room for their amazing performance, the Kingsbury Club for hosting our fundraiser, and our FOUR new village sponsors!!
The Community Water Solutions Boston Team (we missed you Mike!)The Rhythm Room!
So far, 2010 has been a great year for Community Water Solutions! Here are some of the things we are excited about:
The CWS Fellowship Program
CWS has just launched our new fellowship program, a three-week leadership training and water education experience in Northern Region Ghana. The purpose of the fellowship is to teach individuals about the global water crisis, and inspire them to become leaders in the field of international development.
The field of international development can often be a hard to break into. Post college, I was constantly looking for jobs abroad with non-profits and international aid organizations, and ran into many roadblocks. Most jobs in international development require years of “field experience,” but how can you get this experience if no one will hire you?! Its frustrating. Through the CWS Fellowship, we are hoping to provide individuals with some of the field experience necessary to start a career in international development, while also teaching them about the global water crisis.
We believe that this program is going to be the future of CWS. It will not only allow us to reach more villages more quickly through the help of our fellows, but also help us spread awareness about the water problem. We hope to inspire others to join us in providing clean water for the world, either by staying on with CWS, joining another organization working on water treatment, working in public policy, or starting their own non-profit or social enterprise!
CWS is now accepting applications for our Summer Fellowship (June 6th – 28th). If you are interested in applying for the CWS Fellowship Program, please our website and download an application!
Look like fun? This could be YOU!
The Medfield Fundriaser
On Saturday Feb. 6th, we are holding our first fundraising event of 2010 at the Kingsbury Club in Medfield, MA. As I mentioned in the previous blog, the event will feature a fun African drumming performance by the Rhythm Room Live! We will also be showing a movie with pictures and videos from our past year in Ghana, so that past donors can see how much they have helped to make a difference. The event is going to be a blast and I hope to see you all there! A big thanks to Alyse Shorland for putting together the movie for us, and to Jill Moran for volunteering her time and event-planning skills to help us put this together!
We’re Getting a TRUCK!
For the past year, one of our biggest fundraising goals was to raise enough money to buy a truck in Ghana. In the past, we used taxis to get out to our villages, which was extremely expensive and time consuming (the amount of time wasted just waiting for our taxi drivers to show up is ridiculous!) Thanks to all of the support we received over the holiday season (especially from the MIT-Sloan Auction and the Global Giving campaign) we are finally able to get our truck! This will save us enormous amounts of money in transportation (all of which can now go towards helping more villages get clean water!) and will allow us to reach villages in more rural, secluded areas! Peter is currently working on getting his drivers license so he will be ready to drive the truck when I come back in February. Be on the look-out for a post sometime next months with pictures of our new ride!
In a couple of months, CWS could be sporting a truck very similar to this bad boy!
Echoing Green
For the second year in a row, CWS is a semi-finalist for the Echoing Green Fellowship. We are so excited, and honored to have made it this far! With all of the work we’ve done since last year, including in the addition of the fellowship program we think we have a better shot than last year!
Heading Back to Ghana
My plane ticket has officially been reserved and I will be heading back to Ghana on February 15th! I will have a very busy winter and spring, implementing in at least five more villages (sponsored by the Clopecks, our Facebook causes group, Gerry and Judy O’Connell, iContact, and one anonymous donor), while also preparing for our fellows to arrive in June. While fundraising, like online fundraising as well as physical events, and administrative work is a necessary component of working for a non-profit, I, like many others in my position I’m sure, truly love working in the field. I can’t wait to get back to Ghana and start doing what I love!
