From Watauga To Africa, With Water

By Caroline Monday

Wine to Water executive director Doc Hendley and projects director Coy Isaacs recently returned from a trip to Uganda and Ethiopia, where they assessed the water needs of two communities and made plans to help the communities meet those needs. Wine to Water is a local nonprofit that works to help developing communities worldwide provide their people with the human body’s number one need, clean water.

In Uganda, Hendley and Issacs worked with a group building bio-sand filters. A bio-sand filter consists of a concrete holding bin filled with different sizes of sand and gravel. The water passes through the grains of sand, which removes particles from the water. The filter are known as “bio-sand” filters because of the natural layer of micro-organisms that forms on top of the sand. The organisms in this layer consume pathogens as they are trapped in and on the sand surface.

Hendley said the materials used to build these filters can all be found locally in Uganda and the filters are fairly simple to maintain. One filter can provide suitable drinking water for individual households or for larger buildings like schools or healthcare clinic, which might hold a little more than 100 people. Water cleaned using this type of filtration becomes 98 percent pure.

Hendley said Wine to Water is hoping to help construct about 250 bio-sand filters in Kampala over the next year. These filters will provide clean water for about 6,000 people. About 200 of these filters will be installed to serve households of six to eight people, while the remaining 50 will serve larger facilities, such as schools and health care clinics.

The goal of this project, like that of most of the organization’s projects, was to support an existing effort and help that effort become self-sustaining. Hendley said the group learned of the effort in Uganda through the Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST), based in Canada. CAWST had a representative in Uganda, working with local residents to construct bio-sand filters.

Wine to Water will contribute to the project by offering regular financial support, which will help purchase land for facilities and perhaps a vehicle. Isaacs and Hendley said their main goal for their project in Uganda is to train locals construct the filters so that they will eventually become self-sustaining, using nominal fees from community members to support their work. Hendley said it is difficult to tell how long it will take for the program to reach that point, but they are hoping that it will take about a year.

Isaacs and Hendley also traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they visited one of their partnering organizations, Kale Heywet Church. Isaacs said he lived in Addis Ababa for three years while he was growing up and has kept in touch with the church, which specializes in drilling wells throughout Ethiopia.

Unlike other international humanitarian organizations, Wine to Water places emphasis on teaching local residents in areas in need to become self-sustaining, rather than sending volunteers and staff to go over and do the work. Hendley and Isaacs said that, in many ways, this approach is the most effective and efficient.
“There are plenty of capable local people,” Hendley said. Often, local residents are event more capable of doing the work than foreigners because they are already familiar with the language, climate and with where to procure supplies. In the end, Hendley said, a project run by locals will last much longer because the people who run it will not leave to return to their home country, they are already home.

Hendley and Isaacs said they think it is also more effective to work with existing local organizations than to start from scratch. As Wine to Water grows, Hendley said, they may look to start their own projects, but for now there are plenty of local organizations with which to work.

On the whole, Hendley and Isaacs said the trip was a success and they have received lots of positive feed back. Those interested in supporting Wine to Water can contact Doc Hendley at (828)719-6282 or Coy Isaacs at (828)719-8695, or visit their Web site at winetowater.org.