Rotary Clubs Always Pumped for World Water Day

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Mar 15, 2010, 03:20 ET

EVANSTON, Ill., March 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Although the United Nations designates March 22 as World Water Day, Rotary members around the globe are focused on the issue 24/7.

Rotary is committed to helping achieve the UN Millennium Development Goal that calls for a 50 percent reduction by 2015 in the number of people with insufficient access to safe water and sanitation, a crisis that now claims more than two million lives each year, a majority of them children. From 1978 through 2009, The Rotary Foundation awarded 4,923 grants totaling US $52.7 million for water and sanitation projects worldwide.

On March 22 Rotary will participate in a World Water Day conference in Washington, D.C. co-hosted by Water Advocates and the National Geographic Society. Speakers will include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

A humanitarian service organization with 33,000 clubs in more than 200 countries with a total membership over 1.2 million, Rotary is adept at tailoring projects to fit community needs. Rotary members involved in water and sanitation issues will sponsor a World Water Summit in Montreal on June 19, the day before Rotary President John Kenny calls to order the 2010 Rotary International Convention. Kenny has made water and sanitation a top issue for Rotary clubs since taking office July 1, 2009.

More examples of Rotary's involvement with water and sanitation issues:

Three Rotary clubs in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska teamed up with a Rotary club in Guatemala to implement a water system for two rural villages in the mountains of southeastern Guatemala. Completed in late 2009, the project now supplies water to 85 percent of the area's residents.
In the Dominican Republic, Rotary members from 120 clubs in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean have helped bring 19,000 bio-sand filters to 300 communities, providing clean water to 100,000 people. Use of the filters can reduce the incidence of pediatric diarrhea by up to 45 percent.
Since 2006 Rotary clubs in Ghana, the United States, Canada, and Switzerland have worked with the Ghana Health Services and the U.S.-based Carter Center to drill boreholes and install wells in more than 75 towns and villages in Ghana, greatly reducing the incidence of waterborne diseases nationwide.