Water

[krazyyouth]

Well i am not going to post a whole lot about this i will send you the link
it comes better from the site than from me
Well i went to the City Of refuge Concert a few wekends ago
and they were talking about people dont have clean water
we take that for atavandge

Here is city of refuge site
www.cityofrefugemusic.com
go to links you may have to make your screan smaller
and go to
Living Water- i dont know the site to living water sorry ;)

[DawnAurora]

A big part of my job is running our Wells and Water service. Since about 1998 we have built or rehabilitated over 180 wells, cisterns, springs, and other water points. I went to Kentucky and bought a well rig and a semi cab to put under it a few years ago.

Good place to note, from Wednesday I will be gone for about a week to Canada to help with fundraising for the Wells and Water program there, I probably won't have much internet access for checking this site.

[LauraA]

Dawn, you are doing so much for the people you serve. What a blessing you are. I hope you enjoy your time in Canada, even though I know it's for work. Maybe a change of scenery will be refreshing and good.

[DawnAurora]

I'm not real familiar with Living Water International, as they haven't been in Haiti for long and they work a long way for us. But what I can tell from their website...

They are using the standard technology for the area, India Mark II pumps on drilled wells. Those are the best known and most common pumps in Haiti, and there are several places importing or building that type of pump. They are doing what we do, drilling wells with a motorized rig, building the same kind of protective cement base, and installing India pumps. I like that they look specifically to see that the well is cased. I also like that they try to organize a well committee for maintenance after, and balance local maintenance against providing outside maintenance help.

Please note, they like us depend on Rotary Club connections for much of their funding. Much of Rotary funding for wells comes in the form of Matching Grants. The Rotary International funds for the matches come in large part from their investment fund. Rotary just announced a freeze on Matching Grant funds until July due to the financial crunch, and I strongly suspect the freeze will have to continue in some form after that. They (and we) could use help more than ever, their funding sources to keep doing this work are just not going to be able to maintain support. So many people cut back on helping others as one of the first cuts they make. Many have no choice! "If anyone (with means) does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" is very much in Scripture. Others help only out of what they feel they can spare. Either way, now is crunch time for the servants trying to provide for the least of these.

[DawnAurora]

overdue update: The fundraising walk-a-thon in Hamilton, Ontario went well. It was mostly schoolchildren from a few Christian schools doing the walking! 5K, from the city waterworks to the lake and back. The Hamilton Waterworks sponsors it as an awareness raiser for the city. They teach the kids and raise awareness about how the water system works, water conservation, protection of the Great Lakes, and so on. The kids each got a water bottle for themselves and a maple sap collection bucket. They didn't to carry drinking water until they got to the halfway point, then they filled their little buckets and had to carry water back to the start point. At the start point they had a big cube representing the amount of water a family of 4 uses in a day, something like 1000 liters. All 200+ kids put what was left in their buckets into the cube and maybe 1/4th of the cube was filled. It helped them understand how much water gets used in Canada, and how much work it is to carry water!

They raised about Canadian $24,000, enough for around 4 wells here in Haiti.

I got to chill, shop, talk to several Rotary Clubs, and get some other coordination work done with our main W&W fundraiser Roy Sheldrick. He put me up at his house. He and his whole family were really nice and helpful. They had trimmed some maple trees in the yard and the sap started running, so we put out buckets and pots and wound up making a little maple syrup. He also loves to barbecue, even if there are snow flurries. You Wisconsin types probably can relate;).