A THOUSAND indigenous students get safe water!

By our OSDW reporter

Where –  Valle Risco school, Bocas del Toro Province, Panama

When – August 17,2011

The school of 985 students had no usable water half the time.
The stream they got water from with bucket brigades was often so badly
polluted the volunteer “kitchen mothers” could not cook
school lunch, leaving the kids hungry.

JoeBass, founder- president of OSDW said:

“We’ve never seen a school this large with such a big water
problem. So we decided on a four-tank MEGA SYTEM.
We combined our tanks 78, 79, 80 and 81 into one large
system and put in a 100 foot long rain catchment guttering
system to keep the tanks full.”

(Below) Our two trucks enter the gates to the huge indigenous school at Valle Risco.
Ken Eide, our Director of Operations shepherds the four 600-gallon tanks and
installation supplies onto the grounds of the huge school.

TEAMWORK — School fathers built the strong base to help ensure their children
have safe, disease-free water to drink and for school lunches.
OSDW installed the MEGA SYSTEM and connected it to one hundred feet of
rain catchment guttering.

Valle Risco is in a mountainous area of high rainfall.

Key dates:

17 August — the system was installed
18 August –  10 AM – the principal called to say a nighttime rain
had filled the tanks half full
21 August – Sunday night’s torrential rains fill the tanks to overflowing
for the start of the school week on Monday.

The kids will have all the safe, disease-free water they can drink,
and nourishing school lunches five days a week.

Cost: this one-time investment of $4,000 will provide safe
water for thousands of kids for years to come.

Every dollar spent on safe water to prevent disease
saves an estimated ten dollars in medical treatment, and keeps kids
in school learning, instead of missing class or dropping out.

Make a difference.

Help indigenous children have safe water.

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See this map of where we’ve installed rain catchment systems.

Five things you should know about us:

We’re a 501 c 3 charity
No one receives a salary or compensation
We live among the people we serve
We’re monthly donors ourselves.
We need your help to continue this work