Newsletter: November 2009

Water Tank Project Begins

Learn more about our work in Haiti

We have designed a new project to build fiberglass water tanks in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. We hope to make and install 24 tanks each year.

To do this, we will send a fiberglass factory to Haiti and keep materials coming from Miami each month. The cost will be $103,000 in the first year.

Putting the new tanks in neighborhoods now without water in Port-au-Prince will add 20,000 people each month to our customers. That's more than 200,000 added each year.

We Have a $50,000 Matching Gift for This!

We are taking the new project for water tanks for more than 50 U.S. foundations and the results are off to a fantastic start. One foundation has put up $50,000 or half the cost of the project on a matching basis.

That means that your contribution to our project will be matched dollar for dollar. We are amazed by this support.

Clinton Features Our Work in Haiti

Former President Bill Clinton – now UN Special Envoy to Haiti – gave our representative an award for the water tank project in Port-au-Prince. Andrew Weiss – with his wife Bonnie – attended the Clinton Global Initiative Conference in September in New York.

Andrew Weiss, with representatives from FONKOZE, Habitat International, and Partners in Health were praised by Clinton who said: "If Haiti pulls out of this (poverty) it will be in no small part because of the efforts of non-governmental organizations." We felt privileged by the recognition.

New Partnership for Thanksgiving

The Government of Haiti and the capital's water agency – CAMEP – now request our chlorinators be installed on each new water tank they create.

CAMEP is also working with our staff to select new neighborhoods to receive water tanks using criteria such as local piping, water sources available, population, and institutions nearby including schools, hospitals and orphanages. (For more information, see our photos, sample water source chart and local neighborhood map with pipe layouts and sizes.)

Chlorinator Installations

Dalebrun Esther – our Haiti Director – worked with our plumbers to install one LF 500 chlorinator on the new water tank in Cite Gerard 2. This neighborhood is near Cite Soleil and is called Hollywood because of the many gun battles there between local gangs and UN soldiers. It is said to be the worst and most dangerous place in the capital city. Cite Gerard is now a shantytown with 18,000 residents without drinking water or a health center. The International Red Cross put in the water tanks.

Two more chlorinators were installed in Nerette, a big shantytown near Delmas 60. GRET/Haiti paid for the new water tanks with CAMEP. Before people went from Nerette in groups, getting up at three in the morning to bring water from Petionville. The quality of the water was terrible with cases of typhoid, diarrhea, stomach aches and vaginal infection frequent.

A large chlorinator – LF 1000 – was installed in Decayette serving 35,000 people. The local water committee was afraid to use the water in the local reservoir because of contamination. They requested our chlorinator installation.

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