Our Club, via its International Committee, agreed to help support the project in Bangladesh that will provide desalinated ground water in identified rural coastal areas of the country using a special water filtration system.
As stated by the Dhaka club, “coastal belt residents are dependent largely on water from rivers, canals and ponds for their daily household needs. For example, over the last decade residents of Satkhira, Khulna (in the Coastal Belt area of Bangladesh) have been using pond water as a drinking water supply. However, this water is not safe to drink due to water-borne diseases and contamination. Unfortunately, the underground water of these areas is salty and contaminated with high levels of iron, arsenic, magnesium, calcium and other minerals.”
The Dhaka club has already conducted a successful pilot water purification project in one of the coastal villages and this grant will now allow the club to set up the system in seven other villages.
Global grants help Rotary clubs and districts carry out humanitarian projects with clubs or districts in other countries. The Rotary Foundation provides a 50% match of the club contributions and 100% match for the amount committed by districts. The total budget for the project is over US$ 91,000.
Other supporters of this project aside from the Dhaka Club and the Rotary Foundation include Rotary Districts 3281 and 7070, the Rotary Clubs of Toronto Danforth in Canada (international partner on the grant) and the Rotary Clubs of Nepean in Australia, as well as the non-profit organisation SpaandanB, Austin, USA.
The project is particularly interesting to our Club as we also hope to have the provision of drinking water central to our gift to Canterbury to celebrate our Centenary.
For a video relating to this project, please visit: https://youtu.be/2X8ujTD8Ytw
Picture: Part of a screenshot from the above video showing the system in use for water collection. By permission from the Rotary Club of Dhaka.
