By Matthias Saladin | Project Coordinator
Project update and matching day: April 29, 2010
Dear supporters of the project “Safe Drinking Water for 80,000 children in Bolivia”:
From Haiti to Bolivia and around the world, water is in the headlines again, and we would like to point out to a few events and news related to our project:
The April issue of National Geographic (special edition on water) features an article on a project to promote Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) in the slums of Nairobi (Kenya). You can read the article (titled “High Marks for Clean Water”) online on the blog of National Geographic: http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2010/04/high-marks-for-clean-water.html
Since the beginning of the year, rains continue to fall in the Andes, with floods affecting thousands of families in the region. Due to increased temperatures, the glaciers of the region are releasing more water and causing many rivers reach record levels. Among others, the BBC is reporting on this phenomenon and documents the story of Alivio Aruquipa who went to the Climate Summit in Copenhagen in search of support to claim compensations for the damages caused by the melting glaciers. Read the story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8629379.stm. With large cities like La Paz and Lima relying heavily on glacier melt for their water supply, this will be an issue coming back to the headlines for the years to come.
In Cochabamba (Bolivia), where the SODIS Foundation is headquartered, water has an especially tragic story to tell. Ten years ago, a civil movement was formed to protest against the tariff hikes of the recently privatized municipal water supply agency. The violent clashes between protesters and the police, also known as “water war”, led to a state of emergency, the death of at least five protesters and finally the cancellation of the contract with the private company. One recent article on this story and the following developments can be found here: http://www.alternet.org/water/146521/water_wars_continue:_how_one_city
Water often is a matter of live and death. Contaminated water continues to kill a child every 20 seconds worldwide. The good news is that the rate is dropping – but it is dropping slow, putting at risk millions of people. Today more than 800 million people drink water from unimproved sources – that is, from rivers, dug wells or irrigation channels. At the SODIS Foundation, we are working hard to change this and bring safe drinking water to those who need it most. With your support, we can go reach out to additional people. Thank you for your continuing support.
Best wishes from the SODIS Foundation,
For the project team: Matthias Saladin
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