Friday, March 20, 2009

World Water Day and Healing Waters International Update!

As I posted earlier, March 22 has been declared World Water Day by the United Nations. This is a day to raise awareness about the global drinking water crisis and the fact that more than 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water.

Healing Waters International is working to solve that crisis by installing water purification systems in poor communities in Latin America. We co-locate the water purification systems in churches in urban areas that have a contaminated drinking water supply and empower the local church to run the water purification system as a microbusiness enterprise, providing a source of affordable safe drinking water to the community and also providing small scale economic development


220 million of the 1.1 billion lacking access to safe drinking water live in poor, urban communities around the world.#
The growth of these urban slums is so rapid, it is predicted that by 2030 they will include 2 billion people.†
Poor, urban communities of the developing world pay the highest prices in the world for water.†

# Human Development Report, World Health Organization, 2005
†The Challenge of the Slums, UN Global report on Human Settlements, 2003

Healing waters international focuses on poor urban slum communities that are overlooked by other organizations because they do have a water source. However, the water from these taps is most often contaminated (90% is in Guatemala). We install water purification systems with local partners to provide affordable, sustainable safe drinking water to the poor in these communities.

Healing Wates was featured on a couple of news programs on local TV stations in Denver today. You can see one of those interviews by clicking on the link below:
http://www.9news.com/life/programming/shows/mornings/article.aspx?storyid=112223&catid=229

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

greg, two great stories. first about the community that is helping to provide micro-financing to kenya. then the system that wasn't maintained. the pics of that old filter are disgusting. thanks for your hard work. i will be gone when you come back, so we will have to make time for dinner in april. be safe.
dan

Anonymous said...

Hi Greg,
I am supposed to be getting ready to leave for California and I can't tear myself away from your BLOG and stories from Guatemala!!! It makes me want to take an extended trip to all our countries. Great work, great BLOG, me gusta los fotos!
Joyce