Run for Water

In April, there was an international event that was coordinated by Live Earth called: Run for Water. I volunteered to organize the run here in Bamako.

The purpose? To raise awareness of water crises and shortages throughout the developing world. Specifically, potable water issues.

In developing countries, the average distance that a woman has to walk in order to get water is 6k per day. That's 6k--carrying enough water for their whole family. Some of the projects that my fellow Peace Corps volunteers work on include building/repairing wells, pumps and soak pits. Unfortunately, these are the types of projects that require a lot of money. The parts and the cement are definitely not cheap (One of my friends' pump repair projects has an estimated cost of 500,000 just to fix two pumps in the village). Because most of this water isn't potable (it's just coming from wells that are full of bacteria and other problems), it also means that people are often sick (and it can also lead to death). This is particularly true of children, who haven't built up resistances to the many bacteria. In Mali, 113 out of every 1000 infants die before their first birthday (because of diarrhea and diseases like cholera--all due to water).¹

There are, of course, ways to get the funding. One of them, is getting people and businesses from back home to donate money. Peace Corps actually has a page specifically for this. You can look up projects and donate money (which is 100% tax deductible). It's on the peacecorps.gov website.

Overall, it was only a moderately successful event. I had hoped to raise money for one of the pump repair projects, but sadly, that didn't happen (we only managed to raise approximately $40USD, which is still better than nothing at all). As a positive, however, we had about 45 people show up to the event, where we could talk about water issues that were relevant to Mali.

Run for Water 1: People getting in
a circle for warm-ups before the run.

Run for Water 2: Post run--with one of the
runners wearing the shirt I designed for the event.

1. http://www.usaid.gov/stories/mali/ss_mali_waterpump.html