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Water Centric was thrilled when seven students from Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts visited our Sri Niwaspuri school in Delhi in March of this year. Teacher and Acting Department Chair Amy Enright, accompanied the children on their trip and writes of their “physical, intellectual and emotional journey” and their “uniformly positive, if a bit amazed” response:
“Rivers students were very impressed with the poise and knowledge of the Sri Niwaspuri girls. Several members of the Sri Niwaspuri school hygiene club performed poetry and songs describing the importance of disease prevention and hygiene discipline. Both groups of students got a chance to practice their basic knowledge of Hindi and English greetings and then translations of the performances were offered by teachers and by the Water Centric/Sakshi representative, Mr. Zuber Khan.
“The visit to the school, one Rivers junior reflected, allowed us to see the challenges of water management in an urban setting and to imagine the difficulties of running an elementary school without the benefit of clean water and working facilities. As institutions for youth, schools offer a unique opportunity for new generations to learn about and practice a culture of hygiene. Rivers strongly supports Water Centric’s focus on schools as a place to start to raise cultural expectations for clean, accessible water.”
Water Centric is coming close to completing work in its initial ten schools, steadily delivering water, sanitation, and hygiene education to more and more school children in need. To take a look at our latest accomplishments…
Smiles for a New Septic Tank
By Raj Melville (Water Centric Board Member)
I met Sujatha when we worked together a while ago. Always bubbly and cheerful, we continued to keep in touch over the years. A few months ago she sent me a short note, “My fiancé Peter and I are getting married … and we want our wedding presents to be in the form of monetary donations towards a charity in a developing nation…. We would prefer if the charity is centered around providing people with basic necessities like clean water, food, or education.”
I was immediately touched by this generous gesture. Over the next few weeks I shared a number of options with them ranging from established sites that have now sprung up that allow you to add a donation component to your wedding site to suggestions for specific charities. After deliberating with her fiancé Peter, Sujatha informed me that they had decided to settle on just a single charity for their wedding registry. In her words, “This is a great cause and Water Centric seems to be doing some really good work! Pete and I were leaning more towards it for our wedding gift donation/registry.”
Laying Bricks for the New Septic Tank
Of course when I informed Lotika Paintal, founder of Water Centric about this she was really excited and also very moved by this show of support for the organization’s work. Working with Pete and Sujatha, Lotika helped provide a set of links that they could embed on their wedding site for guests to donate and let the donations be tracked. Water Centric also provided regular updates on funds received to allow the guests to see how much was being raised.
Pete and Sujatha setup a page on their site that directed their guests to a Paypal link to channel their donations to Water Centric. In a truly selfless gesture they said on their website:
“We have decided that we already have everything we could possibly need so please don’t buy us any gifts (seriously).
Instead we have decided that it is a good idea is to use this opportunity to give to those who need our help the most. We are working with an NGO called Water Centric to help bring drinking water and sanitation to schools in the developing world.”
Digging A New Foundation
The response to their appeal was phenomenal. They easily blew past what they had hoped to collect. Just before the couple went off on their honeymoon they dropped us a line saying, “We will definitely exceed our target which is great …. We are extremely happy with the outcome and we are convinced it will make big difference in the hands of Lotika’s organization.” We are happy to report that Pete and Sujatha and all their guests were able to raise over $6500 for Water Centric.
Water Centric is truly grateful for this support. It has just completed a septic tank at the Sriniwaspuri school that allows over 1000 girls access to functional toilets, for the first time, at their school. WC will show the couple and their guests the further impact of their donations in regular updates about their schools.
We hope this story also inspires you to come up with creative ways of incorporating your favorite charities into your personal events –whether it is a wedding, a birthday or some other celebration. The joy of giving is twice rewarded as you help support a cause you believe in and see the long term impact of your donations.
To setup a page for your next event, please contact us at postmaster@watercentric.org
Water Centric Found Lotika Paintal talks with Delhi school girls
The Gatehouse News Service and The Lexington Minuteman recently covered Water Centric’s work of delivering water, sanitation, and hygiene education to the neediest schools in India. Please take a look and follow the link to read the complete story!
Startup looks to battle issues of hygiene, water
By Michael Phillis/Staff Writer
Posted Aug 20, 2010 @ 12:20 PM
Lexington — The problem is massive. More than a billion people live without access to clean water and more than 2.5 billion don’t have access to sanitation facilities.
Lexington resident Lotika Paintal recognized the urgency behind the need of so many for accessible sanitation, personal hygiene, and clean water. For a year, when she worked for the Clinton Foundation, Paintal toured eight countries to see the extent of the problem.
To help change the problem and build a model for cultures to have better access to clean water and toilets, Paintal founded Water Centric, and opened an office in Lexington.
“We just started in 2008,” said Paintal who has focused her initial energy on helping schools. “It is an amazing amount of people who die and get sick from water born disease every day and every year. We started thinking about if someone was to make a difference, where would they start. Children in many countries come to school, theses schools don’t have water available. We thought that would be a good place to provide facilities and then teach them hygiene education.”
Paintal decided to develop a model in 10 schools in one of the worst parts of Delhi, India. Paintal said she toured one school, which taught about 1,000 girls. When she asked the school’s male principal what problems were facing the school, he took her outside and showed her.
“These girls are squatting outside, on the ground and I see four toilets that are locked up and that’s it. I asked him why these four toilets were locked up, he said, ‘they were built four years ago, they promised that the city sewer would be built but … it hasn’t,’” said Paintal.
To address the school’s problem, Paintal helped install a septic tank so the four toilets could function. She also built two additional toilets for the school. Which, according to Paintal, still wasn’t enough but was still much better than what was previously available.
The issue is especially important for girls. According to Paintal, in many countries, girls teach hygiene to their families and are also responsible for supplying water. The situation girls face when they don’t have basic facilities is harsh, intimidating, and can cause girls to drop out prematurely from school, according to Paintal.
“As far as school goes, if you squat outdoors, you can get rocks thrown at you from the males. When girls get older and they hit puberty, [the situation] is almost impossible … they don’t go to school for five days at a time, then they drop out.”
Sanitation, apart from being a source for human dignity, is a serious health issue. According to Water Centric’s website, diarrhea and other illnesses spread from contaminated water account for 1.8 million deaths per year. The vast majority of these deaths take the lives of children under five.
In many cases, basic equipment upgrades and education are better solutions than waiting for a large infrastructure project to be approved and completed, said Paintal.
“Rather than leaning towards some fantastic technology … or some big infrastructure projects, just the simple basics of water [are needed],” said Paintal. “Getting toilets to them, making it a priority in these developing nations.”
Water Centric works as a bridge organization between fundraising efforts in the United States and local NGOs on the ground in India. Paintal goes to India to oversee development and assist with the organization’s work three or four times a year.
“We work with a small NGO in India … they insure construction is done and they monitor hygiene. We have some collaboration with government officials who are in charge with the schools,” said Paintal. “We do training with the principals, we train teachers.”
Paintal has a Master’s in Education in international development from Harvard and another Master’s degree in intercultural relations from Leslie University. She has worked for Oxfam – one of the world’s larges NGOs – and was one of five people tasked with learning about the issue of sanitation for the William J. Clinton Foundation. She has worked in the non-profit field for 10 years.
“This problem really got to me,” said Paintal. “I couldn’t believe that systematically things weren’t being done.”
After talking to experts and traveling around the world to look into the problem, Paintal concluded that the best way to help impact the problem was to start her own NGO.
“It never really struck me how big an issue it is and how basic it is,” said Paintal. “Lets just get them water and toilets and a clean life.”
If you have not already registered for Water Centric’s “Bike-A-Thon and Cookout” here are several more reasons to do so. Water Centric is pleased to announce that it will be raffling off several valuable items that were generously donated by its sponsors. You need to be there at the Bike-a-thon for a chance to win one of these fabulous gifts worth $$s.
Here are some of the wonderful raffle prizes
A bike repair kit valued at $80 from The Bikeway Source of Bedford
Two Bicycle Helmets from Pietzo Electric Bikes
Citizens Bank
From Citizens Bank:
- 14 Tickets to the Aquarium valued at $18 each
- 4 Tickets to the Museum of Science
- 4 Tickets to the Museum of Fine Arts
- 4 Tickets to the Boston Children’s Museum
A 1 lb bag of coffee From Peet's Coffee and Tea
A $25 gift certificate from Shaw’s Supermarket
A $25 gift certificate from Verrill Farm
Water Centric’s “Bike-A-Thon and Cookout” at picturesque Great Brook Farm on July 31 is just 10 days away!
REGISTER TODAY and save $10!
- Adults – $20
- Students – $15
- Kids 10 and under – free
- Family cap – $50
Note: All rates will go up after July 29
Reasons to sign up right now:
- You’ll get a good workout -be it on your road or mountain bike or hiking the lovely trails!
- Fun with friends-old and new
- A delicious cookout partially sponsored by Red Bones, Bertucci’s, and Whole Foods
- You get to support a great cause!
- Participate in our raffle – watch this space for the wonderful prizes and sponsors!
Water Centric raises funds to support thousands of school children that are among the 1.2 billion people without clean water, and the over 2.6 billion people without sanitation or any form of toilets.
Your donations go directly to aid over 10,000 school children in Water Centric’s ten-school project in Delhi, India, which provides water stations, toilets, and septic tanks, along with the hygiene education — so essential to improving health and cleanliness – and giving young children the right start in life. Your donation is fully tax deductible as Water Centric is a 501c (3) non-profit organization.
You can see some of the impact Water Centric has been making in our short video.
REGISTER TODAY!
Pedal for a great cause by joining Water Centric’s first annual bike-a-thon on July 31, 2010 at beautiful Great Brook Farm in Carlisle, MA! There will be a 50 mile ride, leaving at 8am; and a 15-20 mile ride, leaving at 10am. Plus, Great Brook Farm has 1,000 acres of walking, hiking, and biking trails, if you prefer. There are also farm animals, homemade ice cream, ancient historic Native American and settler sites, and lots of beautiful countryside.
We’re also pleased to announce that Red Bones Barbeque of Somerville will be providing delicious pulled pork as part of the after bike/hike cookout at noon, and Whole Foods will be providing Goody Bags for all.
To get more information and to register please click here: http://www.watercentric.org/bike-a-thon.html
Please spread the word about Water Centric’s bike-a-thon among your family, friends, and colleagues and help support this great cause! All proceeds will go directly to Water Centric’s ten-school project, which supplies clean water, toilets, and hygiene education to needy schools in the developing world, and helps young children get the right start!
Save the Date for a Great Time and A Great Cause!
Network with new people, reconnect with friends and benefit a great cause!
NETSAP-Boston is holding a happy hour and fundraiser to benefit Water Centric schools at Pazzo Resturant and Bar on Newbury Street in Boston, on June 24, from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm.
Part of the proceeds will go directly to Water Centric’s ten-school project in Delhi, India, which is delivering clean water, sanitation, and hygiene education to the 10,000 school children there. For more information on Water Centric, click on the following link: http://www.watercentric.org/
For more information on the happy hour venue, click on the following link: http://www.pazzoboston.com/
For more information on NETSAP-Boston, click on the following link: http://www.netsapboston.org/
We at Water Centric are always looking for compelling ways to inform our audience about the impending sanitation crisis, with 2.6 billion people lacking toilet facilities, in order to get them engaged and ready to take action! May we recommend a great read for the summer …
Rose George’s book, “The Big Necessity,” does a great job of describing the global sanitation crisis. We highly recommend it and think you will not soon forget her first hand account. Ms. George wrote an article on this subject for The Washington Post and here is a brief excerpt:
“The Planet is soiled with sewage, on land and sea. Our waste is the biggest marine pollutant there is, according to the United Nations Environment Program. In the developing world, ninety percent of sewage is discharged untreated into oceans and rivers, where its high nutrient content can suffocate the life out of seas, contributing to dead zones (405 worldwide and counting).”
“There are dead zones on land, too. Human waste contaminates environments all over the world, rich and poor. Imagine getting up at 4 a.m. in darkness, trekking to a nearby bush or field, and going to the bathroom out in the open. Imagine then being hit by a farmer who doesn’t like you toileting in his field, or being raped by someone taking advantage of the dark, which you need to preserve your modesty. The quarter of the world’s population without access to sanitation – not even a bucket nor a box – don’t have to imagine this. It’s their daily reality.”
To read this complete article, please click:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/needtoknow/2009/04/the_politics_of_toilets.html
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