ROTARY CONVENTION DAY #1: CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION

(First picture:  African women at well collecting clean water.  Second picture:  RI President Ray Klingingsmith and Terry Gilbert, DG 2010-11.  Third picture:  L. to R.:  Malaika Wright of CARE,  Rusty Broughton, D5400 Foundation Chair, Nancy Gilbert, WASRAG organizer.)



Rusty Broughton, our Foundation Chair, I just spent a full day with 300 Rotarians passionate about water and sanitation and part of WASRAG (Water and Sanitation Rotary Action Group). Quite an experience.

RI president Ray Klinginsmith capped the meeting by remembering his visit to a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, home to over a million people, without roads, or clean water or toilets. What social explosion could occur there, he wondered out loud. So did I.

His story buttressed what I had been hearing: clean water is a life issue, literally. Over 1.5 million children die each year needlessly from diarrhea. The fecal matter from diarrhea spreads disease in villages that sickens or kills others.

Clarissa Brocklehurst, , Chief of UNICEF’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Section, was blunt when she said, “The problem is sh- - t!” (Now, should I put that in my blog, I said to myself. Yes, I decided because she might have been blunt, but it was a truth we should hear.)

We have unspoken behavioral and cultural expectations in Idaho that keep us healthy - - not using public waterways as toilets and washing our hands. (Okay, most, not all Idahoans adhere to these expectations except some cowboys I’ve known.) –Such ideas in an African village may seem strange. “It’s not the way we do things here.”

“Water and sanitation are technically easy,” said one speaker, “but culturally and socially complex.”

In other words, we must not only help build wells and toilets, we must help educate villagers about using both properly. (Don’t store your bicycle in the toilet stall. Actually use the toilet instead of defecating in the bush.)


Here’s another Idaho expectation: we send our female students to schools with toilets and will provide them privacy when menstruating. In an African village where schools have no toilets, parents remove female students from school during menstruation, disrupting their education. (No toilet = no education.)

As I sat through the meeting writing copious notes, I said to myself, “Is this the next end-Polio-type-effort of Rotary?”
From President Klinginsmith’s final remarks, I think the answer is clearly yes.

He said that the 2016 Council on Legislation will determine our next major project. And because of WASRAG’s passion and success stories, clean water and sanitation is well on its way for serious consideration.


(Passionate yourself about clean water and sanitation? November 19 is World Toilet Day. March 22 is World Water Day.)

Learn more…much more … at http://www.wasrag.org/.