Be the Change - Part Four

Goal #1: Raising money and awareness about the current situation

Raising money and awareness is a crucial step in helping solve the problem of the world’s water supply. Only with the necessary money and resources can we hope to fix this issue. In order to do this, we will recruit volunteers to hold awareness events and fundraisers in the community. At community events, we will set up information booths with posters and staffed with volunteers that educate the public about the problems we are focusing on, the mission of the charity, and ways they could get involved. We will visit high schools in order to target a passionate, giving population. At high schools, we can hold both long term fundraisers and spontaneous fundraisers in the form of Miracle Minutes. We can also try and get school organizations involved, such as Key Clubs and community service clubs. These presentations do not have to be extremely fancy because we are taking advantage of locations events that are already taking place, thus keeping costs at a minimum. After three years, we want to have raised $100,000 through these activities.

Goal #2: Teach people good sanitary water practices how to maintain their water supply and purification devices

Our second goal is to educate the populace about water cleanliness, teaching people proper and sanitary water practices. Specifically, we aim to educate citizens in the country of Lesotho, an impoverished and landlocked African nation, where 40% of its people reside below the international poverty line. In the short term, our goal is to have educated the residents of three towns on good practices involving hand washing, water boiling, and properly separating water for cleaning and consumption. In the longer term, approximately two years, we hope to have educated 24 villages in Lesotho about sanitary water keeping practices. By spreading education and understanding about how to hygienically utilize water resources, we aim to lower the prevalence of waterborne illnesses in Lesotho by 15% in three years. To be able to efficiently and pragmatically commence water related education in Lesotho, we suggest involving the Peace Corps or similar volunteer organizations to help implement our plans. These volunteers would be trained at special volunteer orientations about safe water practices, and then would be deployed to Lesotho to help educate the general populace.

Goal #3: Utilize research and technology to provide efficient purification methods and devices.

Even having a supply of water is not sufficient for survival. Every 21 seconds, a child dies from a water-borne illness. Our third goal involves the distribution of current purification devices to residents of Lesotho and the building of clean water wells to make water available to residents of Lesotho. This way, we will be able to provide water to the people of Lesotho and the means for them to use their resources. This can be done simultaneously with our second goal (education goal). However, current purification devices are not practical or cost effective. For example, the LifeStraw is an effective water purification device that removes almost all waterborne bacteria and parasites, but is expensive and needs to be replaced every single year. To relieve the cost, we will try to form a partnership with a water purification company, such as LifeStraw. We also plan to start long term research into developing a cost effective, practical, and efficient purification device.