Rotary and Water

Clean water sources are a highest priority

Rotary recognizes the importance of safe and clean water and has made it one of its highest priorities. Through its network of 33,000 service clubs, Rotary encourages its clubs and districts to support efforts which help people to provide themselves with safe water reasonably close to their homes using simple, sustainable technology. This policy is reflected in Rotary projects of all sizes in all parts of the world.

Rotary partners with other nongovernmental organizations, corporations and agencies to improve water conditions throughout the developing world. Additionally, Rotary club members initiate thousands of projects each year to supply, conserve, and purify water – all with the goal of providing clean and safe drinking water to communities in need.

Examples of clean water projects:

• Recognizing Rotary's strength at the grassroots level, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has teamed up with Rotary in a new alliance called the International H20 Collaboration, which will implement long-term, sustainable, water, sanitation, and hygiene projects in the developing world. The alliance will begin work in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, and the Philippines, with other countries to follow based on the success if the initial experiences. Alliance activities in each country will be funded jointly by USAID and Rotary, with an expected minimum initial commitment of $2 million per country.
• In the Dominican Republic, Rotary clubs have helped install more than 18,000 bio-sand filters. These simple and inexpensive devices cost as little as $60 each and can reduce the incidence of diarrhea by up to 40 percent -- a dramatic decline in a leading cause of childhood deaths in the developing world. Participants include about 120 Rotary clubs in Canada, the United States, and several Caribbean countries.
• The Rotary clubs of Bamenda, Cameroun, and Charlottesville, Va., USA have teamed up with students from the University of Virginia engineering school on a water project funded partly by a $13,500 grant from the Rotary Foundation. The effort will help establish three water storage tanks and a connective piping system to deliver clean water to 50,000 people. The clubs have contributed $18,500 toward the three-phase project, which will be completed in 2010.
• The Rotary Club of Paramaribo, Suriname, worked with clubs in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States on a $73,000-project to set up a new water system, including holding tanks, filters, pumps, and other equipment, powered by solar panels. Additional support came from Alcoa Foundation, Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, and Georg Fischer Clean Water Foundation.
• Rotary clubs from New York, USA have developed a comprehensive water system for a clinic serving AIDS patients in Thailand. They also started a project to manufacture and deliver water filters to homes in Choluteca, Honduras. To date, 2,300 filters have been delivered with a final goal of 2,800. A similar project has been started in El Salvador.

'Rotary and Water' is a Rotary International publication