World Water Day

In case you were unaware, the 22^nd of March was World Water Day. To celebrate the day I attended an inauguration ceremony for a water facility in Aveme, a community along the Volta River. For the previous nine months or so, my NGO and I have been working the community to prepare them for the water facility. This included forming and training a Water Board composed of community members to manage the facility. We are trained school children, food vendors, and natural leaders in the community on the importance of using clean water. We hope that the people we trained will eventually educate the rest of the community.

The water facility, provided by Safe Water Network, pumps water from the Volta River and filters it using slow sand filtration. The interesting part about the slow sand filter is that it uses a natural biological process to clean the water as opposed to other filters that use UV rays, chemicals, etc.

The water is filtered to United States standards. After the ceremony I drank some of the water directly from the tap and it tasted very pure. In fact, I think I may have gotten a little sick the next day because my body isn’t used to drinking water that pure.

Free water! Free anything will cause a mob in Ghana.

For more reading on the facility’s inauguration you can read Ghana WASH’s press release here:

http://ghanawashproject.org/world-water-day-aveme-safe-water/