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World Help Foundation 2006 |
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P.O. Box 500
www.worldhelpfound.org
2 A Message from
our President
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Photo by Harvey Sellner
Community Distribution System
Safe water where before there was none! Ghana |
Words From Our Executive Director
World Help Foundation celebrated its 11th anniversary in 2006. I believe that technology is available to solve some of the water problems in developing countries. World Help has completed 128 projects in ten countries and responded to natural disasters in Venezuela, El Salvador and Indonesia.
Beginning in 2001, we concentrated on improving water purification technology and, as a result, developed equipment that is easy to install and maintain, sturdy and, over time, highly cost effective. Even as this new equipment is ready for deployment, we intend for World Help to utilize vendors having a range of solutions so that equipment can be matched with site conditions for maximum global impact.
I maintain that the problem of unsafe drinking water can be overcome only with focused political good will and funding, and aggressive action through effective partnerships. Partnering is necessary between and among village leaders, host and donor governments, implementing groups, water and sanitation industries, development banks, and a broad base of charitable supporters. Charitable giving up-front, and well-stewarded village and local financial mechanisms to cover recurrent costs are key to success; as it takes money to deliver and sustain the solutions. Success can be defined as one project, one village, one country at a time.
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World Help Foundation 2 |
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Message from the President of the Board of Directors Warmest greetings from all at World Help Foundation.
World Help Foundation was
created 11 years ago by Rotarian Harvey Sellner who had a vision of
extending to people, the opportunity of having something available
that we in the United States take for granted - “A Simple Glass of
Safe Drinking Water”. Since then, thousands and thousands of people
now have that dream available in ten countries of Central and
South America, and Africa.
However, there is still
much work to be done as over 1.2 billion people in the world lack safe
water, resulting in
suffering and dying due to the polluted and contaminated water. In fact,
the World Health Organization estimates that every 2 minutes, 5
children die in the world, from the diseases caused by drinking
polluted and contaminated water.
At the end of 200 6, a 40 ‘
steamer container was unloaded in Ghana, West Africa with equipment
that will enable the people in three villages to enjoy a much better
standard of living with Safe Drinking Water available. Another
container in Indonesia is also being unloaded and that has equipment
for 10 villages, and will enable people to have the same opportunity
for Safe Drinking Water as they did before the terrible Tsunami, when
much of their infrastructure was destroyed.
WHF is trying it’s best to help these people, one person at a time, one family at a time, one village at a time and you can help. While solutions must be specified based upon water conditions and user requirements, generally, the equipment costs are as follows. A facility unit, for treating water at the sink of rural health clinics, schools, orphanages or community centers, can be installed for $550. Water can be treated at the point of intake into a facility, allowing for water to flow from more than one tap, for just over $2,500. And a village unit, a conveniently placed service tower from which water is drawn for home use, serving a thousand people daily, where the water condition is the most severe can be built, shipped and installed for $25,000. WHF is currently endeavoring to raise money so more can be done to improve and save the lives of children and their parents.
If you feel you would like
to donate towards a family or a village please contact us. If you
would like us to do so, a plaque can be placed on the facility unit or
community system so the people would know their American friends who
so graciously changed their lives. WHF is classified as a
501(c)(3) public charity and any contribution is therefore classified as a tax
free contribution.
Edward Osterman |
Key
Participants
Michael Apostol
Peter Van Buskirk Kent Carpenter, CE Jacqueline L. Knight, CE Ed Siebert
Kirsten Johnson, Impact Assessment
Leonard Morse, Epidemiologist
Field Staff:
Simon Tamakloe, Ghana Country Representative
Volunteers:
We consider our volunteers as key participants. Our grateful thanks goes to each and every one of them for the generosity of spirit and the diligent work they have offered in service to those in great need. |
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Reflections From the Program Director 3 |
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Mary K.
(Kathleen) Tauras
Dear Friends, WHF's vision recently was expanded beyond water to include sanitation
and hygiene education believing that an integrated approach is needed in
order to achieve lasting health improvement. WHF was instrumental in
forming Water Plus, a consortium of nonprofit and governmental
organizations demonstrating that it is possible to achieve universal
coverage in countries where there is stability and the political will to
do so. The relationships we are developing with the members of Water
Plus will strengthen World Help and provide a common goal. WHF carried out our 2006 operational program with the
building and delivery of equipment both for disaster relief and for
village development. By year's end, we provided ten Disaster
Relief Systems to our counterpart, a Rotary Club serving Banda Aceh, the
area of the epicenter of the December, 2004 earthquake/tsunami. We
also provided three Community Water Distribution Systems to separate
villages in Ghana. Two of these systems included purification and
filtration, the third was a distribution system. This equipment is
in the process of being delivered to the respective project sites for
installation. In order to take our global vision forward, WHF is growing strategically, strengthening our presence in Ghana, the first country in which universal coverage will be demonstrated through effective partnering. We are intent upon fielding an increasing number of discrete projects with sponsor-host partners. These include service clubs, churches, non-profits and schools.
As we progress, WHF
intends to work
together with church outreach ministries as well as established non-profits to implement multi-site programs
intended for replication by churches, host governments and major donors. Having said all of this, we must state that a broad base of support is needed to see this massive problem resolved. We encourage you to participate in this exciting work and to celebrate by watching lives changed by the gifts of precious water, decent sanitary facilities and the knowledge and understanding necessary to realize their impact. It takes a vision...as a Friend of World Help, thank you for sharing this vision and helping to meet these life-essential basic needs! |
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Together We Can Save Lives 4 |
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Community Water Distribution
The village of Samsam Kenan,
Ghana will soon be very fortunate. Recently the Accra-Achimota built a
medical clinic, to serve Samsam Kenan and Samsam Odumase, and, with the
Ghanaian Government, is
staffing it with a full time doctor and nursing staff. WHF has nearly
raised the money for 2 solar-powered water purification and distribution
systems, which cost nearly $25,000 each, one for Samsam Kenan and the
Samsam Clinic, and the other to serve Samsam
Odumase. The Samsam Kenan/clinic system will serve 1000 people
and the Samsam Odumase system an additions 1000 people. Wells have been drilled, but the water is acid,
high in iron and bacteria. Manganese is also present in the water,
giving it a bad taste. The system will treat the water, including killing the
bacteria, and then distribute it to faucets. An overhead tank will provide
water storage of 1000 gallons, and provide the water pressure for
gravity-fed distribution. At both systems, one outside faucet will be
plumbed into an outdoor sink for washing containers and hands before
drawing water at the tower. At the
clinic, the tower system is plumbed inside to the sink where medicines
are prepared and from which safe water will be used for re-hydrating
patients and wound care. Currently, people travel
1-1/2 miles each way if they want to retrieve a bucket of water. Mostly
the job is given to the children, who wade into a polluted pond and
fetch the water for all uses, including drinking. These projects
will reduce the water collection burden tremendously. Pakyi #2, a small village outside of Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city, will also be benefiting soon from the installation of a Community Water Distribution System (CWDS). This system will be placed alongside an existing hand pump so that water can be drawn for animals and separately for a 1000 villagers daily. |
Computers and Books
How much is a single book worth? A school text or children's story in the hands of a young person that might not otherwise have one is worth a lifetime of learning and growing.
This year, WHF sent computers and books in our Ghana shipment. A Rotary club in Tema that distributes books to schools and libraries has built their own large facility including a library. We have collected over 200 computers and enough books to complete the filling of a container that will hold the three safe water systems described in the left column
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Doers Working Together Get The Job Done 5 |
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Ghana Water and Waste Management Survey In the summer of 2006, a Survey team traveled to Ghana to conduct a Water and Waste Management Survey in the Samsam area where two village projects were to be implemented. Nicole Benjamin-Fink, a doctoral student at Michigan State University, headed the team. Harvey Sellner accompanied her to assist with navigating this area and locations outside of Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city, where WHF had previously conducted project activities. The WHF/Ghana Country Representative, Simon Tamakloe, completed the team, ensuring that proper protocol was followed and attending to logistics. The Samsam Survey was conducted by contacting the Samsam Rural Clinic doctor for his response to the Survey instrument and for his input into the health status of the population. The Survey was then carried out in Samsam Kenan and then in Samsam Odumase villages. The surveyor was able to go from home to home to meet villages and to ask them the series of questions that made up the Survey. The questions were comprehensive. Information was gained about how the villagers valued and managed water and how waste was disposed of and, in addition, questions were asked about care of animals as this pertained to the management of both water and waste. This Survey was designed to be conducted in two parts. This was the initial part, the second to come after the safe water projects are installed and used for a year. The information generated is expected to be presented in 2007 and it is hoped that it instruct WHF's effort to develop a village water and waste management training program. WHF does not want to reinvent the wheel to do this but does believe that information gained will help us to improve upon existing training programs. We believe that this is true because this survey examines the management of water and waste from its broadest perspective. After development of the training program, WHF hopes to share it with other agencies working toward the improvement of village management of water and waste. |
Demonstrating that universal coverage is `doable’! WHF is joining forces with several other agencies in the attack on `dirty water death and disease’. As a member of Water Plus, WHF is focusing its efforts first on projects in Ghana, West Africa. President John Kufuor of Ghana and high-level ministerial decision-makers have stated publicly their intention to see Ghana achieve universal coverage by 2015. Ghana is also a target country because it is one of the last bastions of the debilitating Guinea worm (Dracunculiasis), otherwise known as the `fiery serpent’. Through the efforts of the Carter Center and others, Guinea worm has been 99% eradicated and 70% or the last 1% is found in Ghana. WHF has begun to work in partnership with the Carter Center and others of The Millennium Water Alliance, including the West Africa Water Initiative and Water Aid, to break the life cycle of this disease. Ghana was among and even perhaps the first to announce its intention to achieve universal coverage with safe water, but other countries have now stated this intention. Safe water is coming to the forefront of global attention and will continue to do so because the water situation around the world is becoming more precarious. Issue advocacy is needed in order to put into place solutions that will cause this problem to develop less slowly or to avert it entirely. This will take considerable wisdom and political will. WHF intends to continue to be a voice on this issue and to raise our voice even more vociferously in the days ahead. ________________________________ Opportunities to serve WHF’s is expanding its volunteer program. At the end of 2006, several new volunteers came forward to help with fundraising and the Technical Team. Many other opportunities for service are available. This is true for adults and for students as well. Support roles to be filled include administrative assistance, finance support, and program support, as well as other fundraising support. Interested persons can contact WHF by calling 203-426-0433 or by emailing Kathleen Tauras at mktauras@worldhelpfound.org.
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Doers Working Together Get The Job Done 6 |
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WHF Safe Water Disaster Relief History and Current Status In 1990 WHF responded to a disastrous mud slide in Venezuela and subsequently developed a portable Disaster Relief Unit using water purifiers in its inventory. The next year, after a disastrous earthquake occurred in El Salvador, WHF provided the equipment in response. WHF learned from this experience that additional engineering would be needed to modify the equipment in order to handle the excessive volcanic ash contaminating the water. In 2006, WHF provided ten Disaster Relief Systems to serve the population at the epicenter of the earthquake/tsunami, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and area devastated and still in need of help with safe water two years later. WHF believes that it will be very useful to work with other relief agencies dealing with safe water to determine whether or not there is a need to prototype modular systems, equipment that can be configured to specifications determined by site conditions. WHF hopes to begin this review in 2007 and, depending upon the response of the others, may be establishing a consortium of partnering agencies who, together, will secure funding, build and see these prototype systems in service before the end of 2008. The DRU is a temporary solution. Once WHF has a partner on site, WHF can review permanent solution requirements and specify appropriate responses.
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The Challenge We Face We turn the tap and wash our hands, shower, have good tasting drinking water. Even the water we use to wash our clothes and cars is good for drinking. And more! Much of the world is not like that. 1/5th of the world’s population, (1.2 billion) are drinking contaminated water, and their other water needs are not met either! Twice as many lack proper sanitation facilities. Bad water affects infants and children most. In some countries 20% of the infants do not reach age 5, mostly due to the effects of bad water. |