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- Start of the ride …
With the success of Water Centric’s first ever bike-a-thon last year, enthusiasm was high among the organizers and participants. The bike-a-thon 2011 did more than live up to the expectations!
On a beautiful Saturday morning on July 30, just under 100 enthusiastic participants arrived at the Great Brook Farm in Carlisle, MA geared up to ride, walk or volunteer for Water Centric. The scenic 54 mile “Apple Pi” route, was not for the faint of heart, as it wound its way up and down through the towns of Carlisle, Concord, Littleton and Harvard, MA. The shorter 18 mile ride was closer to the venue and a walk along the beautiful park trails was yet another option.
After a light breakfast of fruit, donuts and munchkins provided by Dunkin Donuts and coffee from Starbucks, the bicyclists headed out on their ride. Rest-
- Registration and Breakfast
stops had been arranged for them to freshen up, stretch and fuel up with water and fruits, some of which was donated by Verrill Farms. The Carlson Orchards in Harvard, MA, one of the designated rest stops, was a gem of a spot with several trees, picnic tables and a cool breeze thoroughly enjoyed by the bicyclists and volunteers alike.
- And then they’re off…
All bicyclists and walkers accomplished their respective challenges and arrived in high spirits at the barn of Great Brook Farm where a barbecue cookout awaited them. Pulled pork and pulled chicken from Redbones, salads from Bertucci’s and veggie burgers were just some of the items on the lunch menu. A raffle of items from ATA cycles, Bikeway Source , Belmont Wheelworks and Dunkin Donuts added to the day’s fun and activities. During lunch, the event further spread awareness about the lack of clean water and sanitation in the developing world by projecting a video about Water Centric’s activities addressing the situation.
- Some of our smiling volunteers
We are grateful to all of you for your participation in supporting this important cause and we hope that you will continue to support us in our endeavors. We look forward to seeing you at our next annual Bike-a-thon!
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…
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.”
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 have been making steady progress at Water Centric with just over 2 years under our belt! Here is a look at what we have accomplished in the past few months…
One of the things I most like to do at Water Centric, is inform and engage the next generation on global problems and challenges related to getting a staggering 2.6 Billion people access to sanitation and 1.2 Billion access to clean water.
This spring, I had the pleasure of visiting four great New England universities: Boston University, Tufts, Brown, and Brandeis to talk to students about this issue and tell them about what we are doing here at Water Centric. I was invited to be a guest lecturer for students focused on a range of interests from Non-Profit Management (at BU), to International Conflict and Coexistence (at Brandeis), the Economics of Urbanization (at Tufts) and a discussion on Careers in the Common Good (at Brown).
One thing I’ve learned for sure: if the critical challenge of delivering clean water and sanitation to the world’s most impoverished people is ever going to be solved, we will need the energy, enthusiasm, can-do attitude and smarts of this current generation of students.
This week , one newspaper article put the challenge this way:
“In 1950, fewer than 30 percent of the world’s 2.5 billion inhabitants lived in urban regions. By 2050, almost 70 percent of the world’s estimated 10 billion inhabitants – or more than the number of people living today – will be part of massive urban networks. … As these megacities evolve in the developing world, many groan under the weight of a sudden, massive, and unprecedented demand for services never seen in the West. The basic necessities of clean water [and] sanitation systems to remove megatons of garbage and human waste…are creating one of the greatest logistical challenges ever seen in human history.” The Christian Science Monitor, May 10, 2010
We, at Water Centric, look forward to young people rolling up their sleeves to tackle the problems the world has been struggling with for decades. I am convinced that they may also be our best hope for success!
Lotika
Lotika Shaunik Paintal
Founder and Executive Director
Water Centric, Inc.
Brand New Water Station
Over 1000 little girls now have a brand new water station at the Jasola Village Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) school in Delhi, India. The water station replaces a decades’ old station made of cement. It had only three faucets and no sink to stop the running water from splashing on the children, leaving puddles where mosquitoes breed.
The new station triples the number of water faucets, provides a sink shelf to catch the running water so that it doesn’t fall on the childrens’ clothes and shoes, and is lined with beautiful tile which dries more quickly and stays cleaner than cement.
The water station is used daily by the children for drinking water, to wash their hands, and clean their lunch dishes and cups.
Construction began on February 4, 2010, and was completed on February 26. Congratulations to our local partner Sakshi and to all the young users at the school!
Old, Dirty Water Station
Diwali, also known as “Festival of Lights,” is a time of celebration and thanksgiving in India, for victory of good over evil. This year, in honor of Diwali, on November 5 2010, Water Centric is hosting a six-month Twitter Diwali campaign – “Twiwali” - so that people can express their gratitude for the essentials of clean water and sanitation - while helping others to have the same - by making a simple donation and creating awareness through social sites like Twitter. What follows is one Water Centric volunteer’s account of why he is grateful for toilets. We encourage you to submit your stories on why you are grateful for toilets to our blog as well
A surreal bathroom experience!
By Bhaskar Koukuntla
On a cold November evening, my wife and I decided to celebrate our wedding anniversary by having dinner with a few of our family friends at the Mantra restaurant in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Mantra is very close to our respective work places and is conveniently nestled on a side street between the Theatre district and Downtown Crossing. We had heard a lot about this place as the only restaurant in Boston serving Indo-French cuisine, and that it is located in a building that was previously a bank constructed in the 1800’s. Their décor is unique and in fact their bar is a former “Teller’s cage.” Details of the décor include marble walls and floors, silk drapery, and exotic mirrors with beautiful lighting.
Upon arriving at the restaurant, I paid a visit to the Men’s Room. It was stunningly beautiful with elegant mirrors, very clean and exotic sinks, and elegant glass stalls. The doors to the individual stalls were made of what looked like translucent glass and looked beautiful. Once I stepped in, I was shocked that I could see the outside! My friend was at the sink washing his hands and he suddenly turned around, looked towards my stall and pointed his finger towards me and started laughing. I was shocked!!! I felt embarrassed and wondered how the restaurant could have not thought about this. I suddenly felt very vulnerable and awkward for such lack of privacy.
When I emerged, pretending that I had not noticed anything, my friend explained that you cannot look in from the outside, however the user can see out from inside the stall. This was trick décor with no compromise to privacy at all!! But just the illusion that my privacy was compromised had made me sick to my stomach.
Putting this surreal bathroom experience in perspective, millions of underprivileged families and kids around the world do not have access to the most basic sanitation facilities. They sit outdoors every day exposed to prying eyes and the elements! Water Centric is currently working towards constructing functional toilets for a school for 1433 girls in India. With a small contribution from all of us who are privileged and take such necessities for granted, we can make a change in the lives of all these kids! So this Diwali, spread some light by making a contribution at www.watercentric.org/Twiwali.html
Greetings! We just finished working on an introductory video that will tell you a little more about our 10 school initiative in Delhi. Let us know your thoughts.
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