Whether it is clean water, food, or health/disease, our work is based on two general principles: Sustainable Impact and Community Empowerment. Sustainable Impact The work we do is not merely selected based on the existence of a need. One can find a need almost everywhere. Our projects are selected based on sustainable impact. Not just a band-aid solution that temporarily relieves the effect of extreme poverty, but one that will treat the problem from the root cause. Community Empowerment We believe it is very important not just to solve a problem, but to empower the community to understand the “WHY, WHAT, HOW AND WHEN”. This is achieved through partnership in capacity building, training and sharing of project responsibilities with the local community. TAKE A LOOK AT THIS: The sun is barely up 6 miles NE of the confluence of the Niger and Kaduna Rivers and about 15 miles south of Bida……Nku Community, Nigeria. The women wake up at the crack of dawn…feed their babies and put the baby on their back…nicely wrapped and tight, ready for their daily long walk. They put their buckets and bowls on their head and begin their 4-5 hour journey in search of water. It gets worse… There is a constant outbreak of filariasis (yea google it!), guinea worm, diarrhea, and weakness in adults. It gets worse… Children die form the very water that took their mothers 4-5 hours to find. Here are the issues: i). The single hand pump borehole serving about 700 people in the community reduces in yield during the dry period of February to June, causing people to drink from an open and unclean fishing pond. ii). The water from the bore hole has a very high Iron content as it turns reddish brown within one hour of storage. iii). Research attributes death of children under 5, diarrhea, stomach ache and weakness in adults to drinking this water. iv). Filariasis and guinea worm attack are attributed to drinking from the pond v). Women spend 4 to 5 hours every day searching for water during the dry season In the rainy season, they drink water with very high Iron content and in the dry season they drink from an open and unclean pond. IT’S A LOSE LOSE SITUATION. Now what does this mean? What are the implications? Continuous monitoring was undertaken between July and December 2008 and here are some implications that were discovered: i) . It was found that infant mortality (death of under 5 children) was 41% higher in Nku than the three surrounding villages which have good drinking water. ii) . On the average, men and women lose about 38% of farm work days in the period studied due to sickness compared to between 11 and 14 % in the other settlements. We are Barnabian’s Cove. A group of people that decided that stuff like that just shouldn’t be happening especially when it takes so little (less than $2000!!!!) to offer a sustainable solution. So here is what we are going to do: i) . Improve the yield of the borehole by purchasing a 2 horsepower submersible pump. ii) . Test and De-ionize the water from the borehole iii) . Work with local leadership and organizations to plan and implement solutions. iv) . Educate the locals on Capacity Building, Organization Management, Financial Management and Project Cycle Management The question is: what are YOU going to do? We can’t do this alone. We need your help. Not tomorrow, not next week….NOW. Why? Because thousands of people will die tonight for reasons that can be prevented. We don’t claim to be able to change the world overnight, but we KNOW that it is better to do something than nothing…to start small than not start at all…to save a life than none at all. We hope you agree and act…..now Send this page to a friend: click here
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