Water Aid support update 07 2014

Ryde Rotary Club 'Water Aid' support update 07 2014

The collection of coin thrown into the well at Waltzing Waters at Westridge in Ryde has now been running for 20 years and we have collected and counted by hand £227,272 and given this to WaterAid mainly in tranches of £10,000  over that time.

The main purpose of course is to give fresh clean water to all those people in different continents who have no means of clean water close by and have to fetch water, often dirty and infected for drinking and cooking and rarely washing etc.

Water of any sort to these people is of course a necessity and the condition of it is immaterial to the absolute need. Yes it can be boiled which helps but it is still the number one priority for life.

Giving clean water is not the simple thing it seems.

Fetching dirty water means someone has to do it, usually girls or women in containers of cast off plastic barrels  and carried usually on their heads or shoulders, often a walk to a mud hole or river over a mile away a number of times a day.

The result is that girls and women receive no education and are often disable or deformed for life because of it. Very young children often are infected by what is in the dirty water, animal faeces and the like and many eventually die.

WaterAid pay to have wells dug in suitable places in or near villages and educate people in the village to look after the pumps and the wells.

It thus allows girls to attend schools, it means people can wash themselves and keep clean thus making them more healthy and lessens the number of children dying. It also allows them to do other things like keep allotments for fresh vegetables etc and to sell the excess produce thus increasing their income. They can clean their teeth, but more they can have a rudimentary toilet which can be flushed with water, instead of going into the bush somewhere to go toilet.

Schools can have proper toilets and very many other things which we take for granted.

Just because somebody threw some coins in our well.

KEEP GOING

Contributed JB.