Healing Waters International recently received a grant from Vestergaard Frandsen to begin testing of LifeStraw® water purification products in poor communities we serve. This joint effort allows Healing Waters to pursue a new water purification technology, LifeStraw®, which is a cutting-edge point-of-use ultrafiltration technology. Ultrafiltration is a variety of filtration in which hydrostatic pressure forces water against a semi-permeable membrane. The ultrafiltration membrane provides a physical barrier to bacteria, viruses and suspended solids, thus providing high quality water with low maintenance and consumables involved. The LifeStraw® technology will allow Healing Waters to work in areas where we previously could not with our existing water purification systems due to the lack of a consistent power source. While Healing Waters will be responsible for implementation, training and follow-up, Vestergaard has generously donated 400 LifeStraw® units. Our first pilot project, which will be implemented in April, will include 250 LifeStraw® units which are targeted to be used in the villages of Tierra Colorada and El Triunfo Agrarista north of Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico.
The project has been funded by San Diego First Church of the Nazarene. Their support will supply the funds to implement the project in Mexico which will serve an estimated 1,250 people with safe drinking water for the first time. The 60 families of Tierra Colorada currently get their drinking water from a single storage tank that holds rainwater provided during the rainy season. When it runs out, they buy expensive and unsafe water from pipas, or water trucks. Children are frequently sick with diarrhea and stomach aches. “Very few boil water due to the expense of firewood, the smoke in the one-room homes and the danger of kids getting burned by fire or boiling water,“ said Mario Ernesto Avendano Morales, Area Director of Mexico and Guatemala for HWI.
The community of 170 families in El Triunfo Agrarista sits atop the highest cliff overlooking Sumidero Canyon. While only 15 kilometers from Tuxtla as the crow flies, Agrarista is nearly 100 kilometers by road and impassable by car during the rainy season. The families subsist primarily by growing corn and beans and raising a few cattle. Their single water source comes untreated from a nearby creek via a central pipe.
“We are very excited to partner with our colleagues from Healing Waters International on this comprehensive project to provide disadvantaged communities with clean and safe drinking water,“ said Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, CEO of the company that bares his family name. “I believe this project will create an important opportunity to prevent the transmission of disease, reduce suffering and save lives.”
Vestergaard Frandsen is an international company specializing in complex emergency response and disease control products. The company operates under a unique Humanitarian Entrepreneurship business model. This “profit for a purpose” approach has turned humanitarian responsibility into its core business. Vestergaard Frandsen was founded in 1957 and has since evolved into a multinational leader focused on helping to achieve the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals.
The additional 150 units are projected for possible implementation in Uganda next year.