My Nonprofit Reviews

Transparent in the extreme, with the majority of staff in communities actually being served. Friendly Water is truly proving an example of how to ameliorate the "long walk to water"!

It's all about community for Friendly Water for the World. Local communities around the world being able to determine their own futures starting with access to clean water, making common cause with friends and allies around the globe. Together, everything is possible!

From Zambia to India and beyond, Friendly Water for the World continues to "share hope through clean water". With a platform of seven water-first resilience technologies, Friendly Water invites communities - usually among those most marginalized and disadvantaged - to engage in a process of sustainable community development, relying mostly on their own initiative and drive, unlocking new potentials in the process. All are welcome to join in!

Friendly Water for the World continues to expand its work, both in depth and breadth. Besides BioSand Filters, they are now working with communities around the world to deploy other life-saving techologies; rainwater catchment systems; MicroFlush toilets; non-fired soil stabilized bricks; rocket stoves; liquid non-palm oil soap; PermaGardens. Taken together , they provide an integrated approach to community development, based around water and sanitation.

FRIENDLY WATER FOR THE WORLD - BUKOBA!

There is a lot to say to make full sense of this (the first) photo.

It was taken several days ago in Bukoba, the far northwestern edge of Tanzania. Water conditions are horrific there. There are virtually no working wells or springheads in the region. Women walk or bicycle up to 18 kilometers (!) to collect water daily, and they take their children out of school to assist.

And the water makes them sick. The regional hospital reports that out of every 500 people seen, 430-450 suffer from waterborne illnesses – typhoid, bacterial and amoebic dysentery, occasionally cholera. According to an epidemiological survey undertaken by Friendly Water for the World, children who remain in school miss on average 11 days each month due to waterborne illness.

Friendly Water for the World’s Tanzania affiliate CLAO (Community Life Amelioration Organization), based in Mwanza about 100 miles away, is training 10 groups of people (four of them all-women) in fabrication, distribution, installation, and maintenance of BioSand Fitlers. The local government is assisting with transportation and food, and also with setting up business operations for each group. They also paid for three of the 20 steel molds required by the 10 groups. A local charitable venture “Water for Life” is subsidizing Filters for those who really can’t afford them.

But there is more. While BioSand Filters are the cornerstone of the Bukoba program as they ensure both health and a source of employment/income and hence a movement toward self-sufficiency, they do not move communities closer to a source of clean water. Each of the 10 groups is pledging all profits from the first three months of their BioSand operations toward building rainwater catchment/ferro-cement tanks.

Hence the first photo. Friendly Water has trained two teams of six – people with HIV in Mwanza – to build rainwater catchment systems, and they have become quite expert at it. The local government in Bukoba invited one of the teams to come up and build three for local schools, and train women in the community to do so.

When we first met the 42 families with HIV living on Ilemela hill in Mwanza four years ago, many were already beginning to die of opportunistic infections. Water had to be purchased at the bottom of the hill, and kids were taken out of school to bring it up the hill, where it made everyone sick. Now they are all healthy, trained to make BioSand Filters for others (at a decent wage), and they built a catchment system on top of the hill!

The local government in Bukoba invited them to build the three systems and train others (and are paying for it). For some of them, it is the first time they have traveled, stayed in a hotel, or been paid for their expertise. The excitement is palpable, and we expect their work to spread rapidly throughout the region.

I have just returned from Friendly Water's work in Rwanda. Starting with one group of HIV positive widows, there are now 49 groups, all self-sufficient, with 700 members, providing clean water to a quarter million people. It is breathtaking to see, with literally pennies needed to ensure good health, free of waterborne illnesses such as typhoid and cholera. Kids are no longer missing school, and members can all afford school fees. It is just amazing!

Friendly Water is on the cusp of the effective altruism movement. They make every dollar count by emphasizing training and knowledge-sharing, and entering into innovative partnerships so that communities can assure their own clean water supply. They work with the poorest of the poor,in the poorest countries, and make it WORK.

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I got hepatitis A from bad water in India back in the 1980s. I had access to health care. Many others didn't. And some died.

More than a billion people don't have access to clean drinking water in the world today. Every day, the equivalent of 20 jumbo jets full of kids under age five crash and burn - killing all those aboard - all from waterborne illnesses.

Friendly Water for the World has found a way to stop it. And it does so by teaching people to do it themselves, not with reliance on governments, foreign aid, missions, churches, or imported expensive equipment. People in communities, making common cause with people around the world, can do this for themselves, using local materials, and local labor, and by setting up small businesses and cooperatives, can make the work self-sustaining.

The impact of Friendly Water for the World - in Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Congo, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, India, and Honduras - is downright amazing, given its very small size. And they invite everyone to participate in this global journey.

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