Water.org is Calling! (part I)

Hello, my name is Alienna and today I am your advocate for international change.

In July 2009, WaterPartners merged with H₂O Africa, resulting in the launch of Water.org. Water.org, co-founded by Matt Damon and Gary White, is a non-profit organization that has provided access to safe water and sanitation to hundreds of communities in Africa, South Asia, and Central America. Since its first project with Haiti Outreach in June 2010, Water.org has helped 8,500 people in Haiti alone gain availability to safe drinking water.

I found out about Water.org after Hank Green visited a Haitian community with the foundation in March 2011. He recorded his experience in two inspirational video blogs that he posted on the vlogbrothers channel. One, Helping Haiti, shows the process of a water committee, the other, Thoughts from The Well, shows the typical long walk Haitians take to retrieve their warm, muddy, unsanitary water. This is what Water.org wants to fix.

The program piqued my interest. The hydrology unit in my Environmental Science class had always been my favorite, and I knew that if I ever went into environmental science, I would want to work with water. The fact that billions of people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water stupefies me. It makes me want to make a difference. Since my discovery of Water.org, I have fantasized about double majoring in both Environmental Studies and Non-Profit Organization Management. Basically, working at Water.org would be my dream job.

In August, I received an e-mail inviting me to listen in on a conference call in which Water.org’s International Programs Manager, Laura Ralston, and Water.org’s Chief Community Officer, Michael McCamon, would talk more about the foundation and host a Question & Answer session toward the end.

Ralston started by talking about the work the organization carries out in Haiti. Focusing on high population and rural areas, Water.org teams work to mend sanitation by building wells and maintaining them through a Community-Management model. The community must first decide whether water sanitation is a problem, then establishes a Water Committee consisting of their own people.

To begin the process, the committee writes a letter of demand to Haiti Outreach, which sends a representative out with a community development worker to prepare the village. Water.org works with Haiti Outreach and the community to figure out the basic (though not always obvious) variables: the cost to maintain the well, how many people must the well provide for, how they would collect funds, who collects the water each day, what are the rules involving the well that the community must follow, who will guard the well, etc.

Water.org does not to simply tell the community how the well should work and leave them on their own, but develops hands-on education to make sure the well survives. Ralston calls it the empowerment model.

However, not every project goes smoothly. The problems do not usually arise because of the technology, but with the design the committee outlines and the continuing support. Some communities find it difficult to embrace this model, and fall apart because the committee cannot handle the system management. This usually happens due to uncoordinated groups with different opinions about how something should run. Community members suffer when political differences halt well maintenance, so outside members have to pressure the committee to compromise. Luckily, Water.org will continue to aid communities until they are on their feet.

For more details, you can listen to the recording of the conference call yourself on Water.org’s website. Next post, I will summarize the second half of the conference in which Michael McCamon discusses the webtool my.Water.org where you can create your own personal fundraiser and follow the progress of the community you help. I'll also go over the Q&A session, where I had a chance to ask a question myself!

Thank you for reading!