PROJECT “LONG REACH” – A JOINT PROJECT BETWEEN OSDW AND FLOATING DOCTORS.
THROUGH THE OPEN SEA TO REMOTE, ISOLATED INDIGENOUS VILLAGES.
Our goal — Install five rain catchment tanks providing safe, disease-free water for 3 schools with
500-plus students and 2,000 villagers.
Floating Doctors’ goal — provide medical help and check ups for a thousand people.
80% of all sickness is caused by bad water.
The doctors treat.
We prevent.
Photo below — Members of the joint team — Floating Doctors and Joe Bass, founder of Operation Safe Drinking Water — on the deck or the Floating Doctors boat after loading the 5 tanks OSDW will install at remote, distant schools. One school has no usable water 3 weeks of the month.
Floating Doctors will provide medical care for all who need care in the remote, rarely-visited indigenous area.
Joe delivers three of five OSDW rain catchment tanks to the side of the Floating Doctors boat, to be lifted aboard and carried out to the remote area as deck cargo, enabling OSDW’s faster, smaller boat to take our tank installation teams out to the schools where the tanks will be waiting.
READY FOR SCHOOLS AND VILLAGES WITHOUT SAFE WATER
Photo — Dr. Benjamin LaBrot and his younger sister, Sky LaBrot, executive director of Floating Doctors, oversee loading the forward deck of their boat with OSDW’s rain catchment tanks.
WHERE IS PROJECT “LONG REACH” GOING?
Our destination is the peninsula in the lower-right corner of the map. Note — we have already installed rain catchment tanks at schools on the seaward point of the peninsula. This is our seventh voyage out to this area, which is accessible only by sea. It is so remote there is no access by land.
WHAT IS THE RISK?
We cross an area exposed to the open seas in a small boat not intended for open-sea work. We’ve already done it five times, turned back by high seas twice.
It’s the only way to reach the people in this remote, cut-off area. There is no access by land due to impenetrable jungle.
WHO LIVES THERE?
Several thousand indigenous people, scattered in large villages along the length of the peninsula. Water-borne diseases affect 80% of the people. Several of the schools only have usable water one week a month.
Schools where we have already install rain-catchment tanks :
Punta Serain, Punta Valiente, Ensenada, Bahia Azul, Bahia Verde.
Schools where we will be be installing rain catchment tanks at this time:
Bucori – 250 students, Bahia Hermosa, 140 students, Bahia Grande, 144 students.
Villages with 2,000 people will have access to safe water when school is not in session.
HOW MUCH DOES PROJECT LONG REACH” COST?
$20 will provide safe disease-free water for 50 students and villagers
$50 will provide safe water for 150 people.
$100 will provide 300 people safe drinking water for years to come.
$975 will provide your own rain catchment system for a school and village.
The gift of life is given again — every time it rains.
FIVE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT OSDW
We’re a 501 C 3 charity.
No one receives a salary or compensation.
We live out among the people we serve.
We’re regular, monthly donors ourselves.
We’ve installed 72 rain-catchment systems
for indigenous schools and villages.
(Tanks 73-77 will be installed during Project Long Reach)
Support Project Long Reach today.
Click here to help
| Joe Bass, Founder | Ken Eide, Operations Manager |
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SEE this cover article about OSDW in the “Bocas Breeze“
Hi Ken (you old neighbor!). I’m delighted to see that you are back in Panama. I had heard you were heading down.
Jim