Safe Drinking Water for 40 schools in Bolivia

Dear Supporters,

We quickly wanted to inform you about exciting news related to our project for 40 schools in Bolivia, which you supported in the past:

• The project is making good progress on the ground. An intermediate evaluation showed that key habits like treating drinking water are now practiced by 70% of the children, up from less than 25% at the beginning of the project. Water is treated by two different technologies: chlorination and Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS). Both technologies are working properly and teachers as well as pupils learned how to apply them in order to obtain safe drinking water.
• Two of our project pictures made it to the finalists of a photo contest on the Global Giving website - these are the pictures you find in this report. We choose them because they show how in our projects water not only is regarded as a basic human need, but also a source of joy and happiness. A special "thank you" goes to the author of the pictures, professional photographer Matteo Bertolino (www.matteobertolino.com), who generously donated the pictures to the SODIS Foundation.
  
• A group of external experts visited the project in August, among them representatives of the National Agency for Basic Sanitation (SENASBA). They were very impressed with the project and want to use our monitoring system as a national standard for all future water and sanitation projects.
• We are now also getting financial support from a corporate sponsor (www.striiv.com). Thanks to this support, we have passed the 50%-mark of our funding target and are on track to meet our funding goals for the project.

Overall, we are very encouraged to see how fast the promoted new technologies and solutions to save lives have spread. However, our evaluation also showed that it is necessary to bring these innovations from the schools to the families and homes. Thus, we elaborated a plan for an additional project phase, which will start in November 2012 and will reach out to these families.

Please feel free to pass on the word about our projects and activities to friends and family members. We are looking forward to receiving feedback on the project and on this report - is this information useful for you?

Best regards from the whole project team,

Matthias Saladin

Links:

• Our newly designed website - check it out
• Global reference site for Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS)

Dear supporters,

We just quickly wanted to let you know that June 13th is a Bonus Day - this means that donations to our project will be matched by additional 50% on this day. This makes your donation even more effective and helps us to reach out to even more people every day.

During my last visit to the project, I witnessed that important changes are taking place, and sometimes at unexpected places. For example, I was astonished to find that in one school in Tiquipaya, the most commited person was actually the secretary, Ines Salazar. She is a very energetic person and has voluntarily taken on the task of overseeing the healthy practices which are promoted by the project - to disinfect drinking water and to wash hands. "I think that it is very important that children learn about healthy habits at school, because it is here where they acquire knowledge and habits which serve them their whole life."

We agree very much with Ines - how about you?

Best regards in the name of the whole project team,

Matthias Saladin

Links:

• Our website