Overview
Diseases caused by unsafe drinking water kill approximately 1.8 million people from the developing world each year. The simple benefit of having safe drinking water is often something that the western world takes for granted, little realizing the difficulties and public health nightmares that developing country’s face from a lack of sanitary drinking water. In Peru, there is an absence of centralized water treatment facilities, meaning that it is down to individual communities with the support of NGO’s to help implement systems to improve the quality of water.
In 1981, Dr. Fernando Mazariegos of Guatemala developed the world’s first ceramic pot filter (CPF) as a manner in which to combat diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe drinking water. The filter aims to eliminate bacteria and parasites from contaminated water, and make it safe for human consumption. After the development of the CPF, a Nicaraguan non-government organization called Potters for Peace helped carry the model further and assisted in distributing the design to various other organizations all around the world, one organization that they helped shared information with was ProWorld Peru.
ProWorld Peru is now in the beginning stages of developing and distributing filters to disadvantaged and rural communities. In the pilot stages of the project, they were able to successfully note a reduction in parasitic infections within communities that had the CPF’s installed.
In 2010, a volunteer group for ProWorld Peru helped develop a marketing campaign called K.U.Y.A. which aimed to promote the use of the filters. Now, every Wednesday volunteers head into the public market in Urubamba to hand out fliers and start conversations with community members about the importance of clean water.
The GoAbroad Foundation hopes to raise awareness and siphon funds to help ProWorld Peru’s effort to market, develop and install mall CPF’s into rural communities throughout Urubamba.
How You Can Help
Make a pledge to the Water Filtration Project through the GoAbroad Foundation.
Write a check addressed to “The GoAbroad Foundation” and attach it to a completed Peru Donation Form (.doc | .pdf ) and mail to:-
Send the completed form and check to:
GoAbroad Foundation
324 East Oak Street
Fort Collins, Colorado 80524
U.S.A.
