from the field

December 9, 2011
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The story behind the Jerry can.

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jerry can logo

You’ve seen it everywhere on our site, at our events, on our shirts… tattooed on our arms… and although the Jerry can has become a mainstay for our staff and supporters, we want to let you know what it actually is and why it’s a symbol of the charity: water mission.

jerry can splash

What’s a Jerry can?

Simply put, a Jerry can is a container for fuel or water. Many people in developing countries use it to haul and store their drinking water. The standard five-gallon Jerry can weighs about 40 pounds when full.

To us, the Jerry can is a symbol of the water crisis. Millions of people around the world spend hours each day with one strapped securely on their backs, held tightly to their hips or balanced on top of their heads. The Jerry can is a part of their everyday lives. It accompanies them on long walks to a water source; for women in Sub-Saharan Africa, this is at least a three-hour ordeal. It is the keeper of a precious resource they must make the most of each day; many families use just one five-gallon Jerry can each day.

But the bright yellow Jerry can is also a symbol of hope to change the water crisis.

What if we could make it so that all the water collected in Jerry cans around the world was safe enough to drink? That it could bring health and opportunity for communities in need? That is our mission.

jerry can old

A little Jerry can history…

To most people, this simple metal or plastic can means “gasoline,” and rightfully so — the first Jerry cans were introduced as gasoline containers by the German military at the start of World War II. These five-gallon cans, also called “Jeep cans” or “blitz cans” (or, in Germany, “Wehrmachtskanisters”) were made of steel and usually sat in the back of vehicles as a reserve tank of gas. It’s said that Adolph Hitler anticipated the biggest challenge to taking over Europe in WWII was fuel supply. So Germany stocked up.

As Germany moved through Europe and North Africa, so did their thousands of gasoline cans. These cans proved to be dependable and durable; soon, countries all over the world were adapting them to haul and store liquids, coining them “Jerry cans” because of their German origin (“Jerry” was a snide name for a German WWII soldier). New water container designs emerged but nothing could top the strength and simplicity of the original rectangular, X-marked Jerry can.

By the 70s, the plastic Jerry hit the market. Steel Jerry cans weigh 10 pounds empty; a plastic Jerry can weighs 3.5 pounds, and is much cheaper to manufacture. While the military uses metal cans, people all over the world now buy fuel or water for domestic use in plastic Jerry cans.

jerry can line

Since plastic cans ship easily and inexpensively, you can find fuel for sale in bright yellow or blue Jerry cans in just about any developing country. And when the gas is gone, families resourcefully keep the can — and after a good wash, it becomes a primary water container.

Before plastic Jerry cans, many communities we work in used heavy clay pots or metal containers to haul their water. Their switch to Jerry cans in the last few decades makes sense: a recycled plastic can lightens up the three-hour walk many take each day to collect water.

jerry can line

Join us to share the Jerry can.

We invite you to also take up this symbol to raise awareness about the nearly one billion people who live without clean drinking water. Check out our new Jerry can merchandise. Use our Jerry can banners, Twitter backgrounds and print materials to spread the word. Pass on the Jerry can and teach others that we can change the water crisis in our lifetime.

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November 17, 2011
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From the field: country life in Amhara, Ethiopia.

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Amhara, Ethiopia.

minchit

I arrive in Ethiopia’s Amhara region after rainy season has just swept through. The fields are lush smears of gold and emerald. Every piece of land seems to be covered in a crop. In vast acres of teff, maize, sorghum and corn, specks of white scarves appear and submerge again — the farmers bent over their crops, harvesting their livelihood.

minchit

From what I picked up in conversations from the fields to the villages, farmers in Amhara make a pretty decent wage.

But country life isn’t easy.

Those who aren’t in the fields — usually kids and moms — spend most of their day preparing food, collecting firewood, herding animals and taking care of other chores necessary to keep their families healthy.

Mintamir, 18 years old, is one of them. Like a lot of the farm kids from my hometown in rural Michigan, she’s been handling chores since she was old enough to walk. When these chores were taken care of, only then would she get to school.

But unlike most farm kids in the U.S., of all her responsibilities, the most time-consuming and physically difficult was collecting water. She’d spend much of her morning walking to an open pond, then hauling her Jerry can home to her house. Her family would make the most of just a pair of these five-gallon containers of water each day. That meant only enough water to bathe (at most) once a week and wash clothes every two weeks.

“We didn’t even wash our faces or care for our personal hygiene,” she tells me. “We were ashamed of our body odor. But also, we’d get sick and then we didn’t focus on school. We’d be tired and sleepy.”

minchit

Mintamir has met kids from another life; the city. Her school was a mix of country and town folks. As she learned about their lives — more available water, no cattle to watch over, no crops to tend — she grew anxious. These other kids had time. School was their main focus. What if she fell behind? What if her chores, her illnesses, her waning self-confidence, set her back?

“We are country girls,” she says. “Because we were born here, we’d have to care for animals and the farm and also have to fetch water. We’d be late to school.”

Mintamir pushed through. She’d get up early, she’d stay late, she’d do whatever she had to in order to finish her education. But she’s the exception, not the rule. Our partners tell us that many kids in this area miss school to collect water; the dropout rate for girls is especially high.

Such is the way of country living, many believe. Girls like Mintamir accept that this comes with growing up in a farming family. But they also know that one of their most demanding chores could be relieved completely if they had a clean water source nearby.

“The society is changing here. Now, our time has become like… a computer! Efficient. It’s very different.”

So do we. In 2010, our local partners A Glimmer of Hope and ORDA (Organization for Rehabilitation and Development in Amhara) built a charity: water well right in the middle of Mintamir’s village.

She explains that families can now accomplish more each day. Kids can finish collecting water before school and buckle down on their studies instead of juggling multiple trips for more water later in the day. They can come to class clean and ready.

“The society is changing here. Now, we’re using our time efficiently,” she laughs. “Our time now has become like… a computer! Efficient. It’s very different, very different.”

minchit

And with clean water so close, she says families have doubled the amount of water they can use each day. People bathe regularly and wash their clothes every week.

Like the city people, she says.

“Now we are the same! We drink well water, too, and feel clean,” she says, speaking for the younger kids around her who are still in school. “When the bell rings, we attend class at the same time.”

She laughed.

“I am just like them now.”

Mintamir has plans to move from her small village of Minchit soon. She’s going to Bahir Dar, Amhara’s second-largest city, to pursue more education. She’s a farm girl at heart, but she’s eager to keep learning. Now that Minchit has water, she hopes more girls in her village will have that chance, too.

– Mo Scarpelli
charity: water multimedia producer

To date, we’ve funded 330 projects in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Learn more about our local partner, A Glimmer of Hope, here >

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October 14, 2011
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from the field: the value of water in Mali.

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mali nat

Oct. 2011 | Mali
Mali is famous for a number of things: the legendary city of Timbuktu, the extraordinary mud mosque of Djenné, an amazing music scene, among many other things -– but water supply isn’t one of them. Although the Niger River arcs through the southern part of the country, most of the land is covered by the Sahara and water is scarce…

… unless you know where to look.

I got to spend some time last month traveling in Mali around Segou and the capital Bamako learning about the Malian water situation and how some people are working to deal with it.

They’ve learned that 30, 40, 60 meters down, there are aquifers that can provide drinking water to rural towns and fast-growing urban communities. The communities I saw, even in rural areas, are densely settled and are ideal for community distribution systems. This is essentially a small utility that brings a high level of water supply to the community.

mali garden

The new water source also brings income to women -– I’ve seen women-managed communal gardens growing cash crops and women running or working at urban water kiosks. The close proximity of the water saves time for collection, and the cash generation helps women with the planned and unplanned expenses in life.

But what I found most encouraging about the solutions in Mali is the commitment of the communities to making it work: water pumps are powered by fragile solar panels, which provide energy for free, but are vulnerable to kids with rocks.

In other places I visited, the panels would be cracked within the month… not in Mali. The water systems are well protected, and the kids are very well behaved. In other countries, getting people to pay for maintenance of water systems is also a profound challenge… not in Mali. Water committees set appropriate tariffs for water fees and collect the money regularly. When asked, they produce bankbooks on the spot with up-to-date records.

mali solar

The value Malians place on water is palpable –- and they protect it as a resource critical to both their daily lives and their future. Mali is maintaining its water systems, developing skills to manage water supply both nationally and in communities, and monitoring its aquifers to make sure they aren’t depleted too quickly.

This is a context where sustainable solutions are just within reach. And with the right support to the Malian people, we can hope to see water supply become another reason Mali is famous.

– Nat Paynter
Director of Water Programs

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August 17, 2011
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Drought in East Africa: narrowing the margin.

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nat

Nat Paynter, our Director of Water Programs, has spent the last few weeks in East Africa, monitoring our work. He writes us after spending some time in the devastated Horn of Africa, where the UN says about 12 million people are at risk of starvation from this year’s drought. Here’s Nat’s take:

From Lira, Uganda

As I write this in central Uganda, the streets outside are thick with mud, miring trucks and people. Uganda is almost through the rainy season here, with maize growing strong, healthy cattle grazing and farmers busy preparing to harvest their crops in a few months.

Some 800 miles to the east, the situation is painfully different. Several failed rainy seasons have developed into a full-blown drought, and famine has followed closely behind. Along with the rest of the world, staff at charity: water have been following this situation as it worsened, wondering what we can do to alleviate the suffering in East Africa. charity: water has always worked to bring potable water to people all over the world, from the jungles of C.A.R. to the altiplano of Bolivia. This past July, charity: water approved a grant for nearly $1 million in drought-stricken Turkana, Kenya, to bring water to 45,000 people. A good start, but this drought has made it blazingly clear that we need to preemptively address drought- prone areas, rather than react when droughts strike.

map

As news of the famine spread, the global community began responding. Water, food, shelter and medical supplies are moving to the refugee camps along the Somali border. Unicef, the I.R.C., Oxfam, Action Against Hunger, Save the Children, the World Food Programme and many others have sprung into action to bring relief.

This response work is critical, but it’s important to remember that this disaster need not have become a catastrophe. What shifts it from an environmental disaster to a human catastrophe is humans. The Kenyan Member of Parliament from Turkana, Mr. John Munyes, reported that deaths among his constituency were not caused by a shortage of food, but by a “lack of logistics.” The Somali militant group Al-Shabab has been restricting access to humanitarian aid for their own purposes. The food is available, the water is available — it’s just not getting to the people who need it.

I believe that one of the defining characteristics of development is a widening margin between comfort and catastrophe. In much of North America, Europe and parts of Asia, that margin is wide and stable; reinforced with the social structures we don’t even see — infrastructure, readily-available health care, credit, food security, etc. In much of the developing world, that margin is vanishingly small. One failed crop, one illness, one job loss can push people from living to struggling to live. Each of these disasters — drought, followed by constriction of aid, followed by overcrowding of camps — further narrows that margin of safety until it disappears altogether, and catastrophe follows.

eth

“We can’t predict where the next earthquake will come, but we have a pretty good idea of where and when drought will strike.”

We know drought will come. Drought is a fixture around the world; Russia and Australia have had severe droughts, and the American Midwest recently went through a drought far worse than it experienced during the Dust Bowl. This was a hardship, but not a catastrophe. The challenge then lies with how we plan for and mitigate droughts’ impact in the developing world. How do we keep it in the realm of “disaster” without tipping into “catastrophe”? If the job is done well, can the margin be widened enough so that drought becomes a “hardship”?

Frankly, we — the NGO community — don’t have a very good track record on this front, as we spring from disaster to disaster. We can’t predict where the next earthquake will come, but we have a pretty good idea of where and when drought will strike.

This current drought in East Africa did not appear overnight, but has been a long time in the making. Had the global development agencies invested sufficiently in water programs earlier, this drought may not have become a famine. Therefore, before the next drought strikes, we need to start investing in the drought-prone areas of the world. We know it’s coming, and we need to get ready.

We can never forget that hundreds of millions of people need water every day. They may not be suffering from drought now, but they still struggle to provide their families with clean water. The rains are falling in Lira this year, but that’s no guarantee rain will fall again next year.

This is the constant water crisis.

For every person who gets sustainable water, that margin between comfort and catastrophe gets a bit wider.

– Nat Paynter
Director of Water Programs

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August 10, 2011
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From the field: keep the girls at school.

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What did you care about when you were in the fifth grade?

Getting A’s or +‘s on your report card? Riding your bike?
Whether you’d make the first rounds in being chosen for a kickball team?

How about what would happen when you left school to walk a mile by yourself to use the bathroom?

Your school probably had restrooms. And you wouldn’t dare walk home by yourself, even if your house was within a mile from your school. You likely didn’t have to worry about this.

Khadija did.

(music: This Will Destroy You)

Khadija’s story.

Talking toilets — it’s not comfortable. But Khadija’s eager. She stands straight up, hands at her sides, in her school’s small yard, waiting patiently in the misty aftermath of Bangladesh’s heavy rain.

She politely answers questions: her age, who her friends are, where she lives, what she wants to be when she grows up. But it’s obvious Khadija is ready to get to the real stuff.

She wants to tell the story of how toilets brought her back to school.

khadija

A year and a half ago, No. 57 Government Primary School didn’t have a bathroom. At first, Khadija tried using the fields close to school, so she wouldn’t have to miss so much class. She’d have a friend stand guard so that no one else could watch or bother her.

But this became “too troublesome” — two people missing class instead of one. So Khadija and her friends started using the toilets of neighbors that lived near school.

In bright green uniforms, Khadija and her classmates stood out as they walked about 20 minutes along the street to strangers’ houses to take care of their business. Boys in the neighborhood would follow them, yell at them, sometimes throw things at them. One day, a crew of kids crushed stones on top of Khadija’s head.

The teasing was about being girls, but it was mostly about being poor. “You go to the school for the absolute poor people,” they taunted. “You have to go someplace else to get water — to beg for water!”

And the retribution wasn’t just from kids. The school’s neighbors were not happy about kids using their private restrooms.

“They’d ask our teachers, ‘Can’t your students pay to use the bathroom?’” Khadija recalls. “They’d say a lot of things to our teachers, but mostly to us.”

Embarrassment set in. Khadija started missing school to walk home alone and use the toilet at her house. Her walk increased to about two-thirds of a mile; with more time on the road by herself, the harassment increased, too.

“I’d feel really bad coming to school,” Khadija said. “I’d tell my parents that the latrines at the school are bad and because the boys are bullies, I shouldn’t have to go to school.”

khadija's school -- girls

They spoke of my school as ‘one where they live like absolute poor people…’ Another time, they crushed stones in my hair.

Last year, she missed 15 days of school as a result. In the United States, many public schools expel you if you miss more than 10 days in a year (unexcused absences).

And Khadija’s count was actually quite low. Out of the school year’s 229 days, the average days missed by No. 57 Narayanpur Government Primary students each year was 35 full days.

Girls specifically averaged 33 days missed; sometimes for sickness — 20% of students suffered from water-related diarrhea, dysentery or skin diseases last year — and sometimes to avoid harassment.

Khadija speaks about these problems in the past-tense because they’re a recent memory for her.

Now, she and more than 300 others at her school have separate latrines for boys and girls, installed by our partner Concern Worldwide. The students and teachers also received training in handwashing, personal hygiene, disease prevention and menstrual hygiene.

All of this has helped drive down the rates of waterborne illness by 15%.

The kids are healthier but more kids show up for school each day, too. Attendance and enrollment have both increased; now, 100% of students in Khadija’s area attend school.

And reports of harassment have fallen by 8%. Khadija told us she feels safer at school; she’s not the only one. Across Shariatpur, Concern Worldwide found that the increase in girls’ attendance was directly due to the decrease in abuse and harassment.

“I use the bathroom at the school — I no longer have to run to my house,” Khadija said. “Now, we don’t have those problems.”

There’s no guarantee that Khadija will never be teased again. Nor is there certainty that she’ll never have another water-related illness. But as she quickly ducked back into her classroom, narrowly missing the rain that started pelting the palms surrounding No. 57 Primary, one thing was for sure: this girl wasn’t going to miss anymore class if she could help it.

– Mo Scarpelli
charity: water multimedia producer

LINE

toilets

Why toilets?

We often get asked these two big questions about our projects that include sanitation (toilets):

Why are you putting money towards toilets? That’s not water.

Access to clean water is just the first step to reducing diseases. Safe water alone can cut the chance of diarrheal disease by 21%. But hygiene practices (like simple handwashing) with sanitation can drive disease rates down nearly 45%.

Health is one thing; dignity is another. Girls in developing countries are likely to drop out of school as soon as they hit puberty, i.e., when they start their period. Wouldn’t you, without a private, clean place to use the restroom and wash? Toilets built at schools have been shown to increase attendance, especially among girls.

What’s so bad about just going outside?

The privacy issue plays into this (explained above). And maybe you’ve squatted outside while camping sometime in your life — you’d think it’s no big deal. But imagine if all the members of your community were doing their business right in their — and your — backyards every time they had to go. Imagine that you walked to school or the store or work through trails of other peoples’ excrement.

People living in areas with open defecation live every day with a high risk of getting and spreading waterborne illnesses. And while diarrhea may be something you can cure with a little Pepto here, in developing countries, it’s often deadly, especially for kids under the age of five.

More about Concern Worldwide’s work in Bangladesh.

charity: water’s projects for schools in Shariatpur, Bangladesh, are part of the Amader School Project, a program implemented and managed by our local partner, Concern Worldwide.

khadija

ASP launched in Oct. 2006 and has since improved education and student health for more than 150 schools across Bangladesh.

The goal is to improve learning achievement in the classroom, increase attendance and retention of students and to make sure the poorest families have access to education.

Water and sanitation projects are an essential piece of ASP. Through charity: water’s projects at schools in Bangladesh, more than 59,000 people have received access to clean drinking water and latrines.

Concern’s local teams manage project construction and form local groups to look after the projects and handle hygiene training. They work with the local government to test the water quality of each well. And, they gather data from each area to track the impact of the projects.

Here’s how Concern’s ASP program uses water and sanitation to bring kids to (and keep them in) school:

concern

Khadija’s story is just one example of how water and sanitation projects at schools can make kids at these schools healthier, more prepared to learn — and even safer. We’re proud to partner with Concern Worldwide to enact change at schools in Bangladesh.

Learn more about Concern Worldwide here >

*Sources: Concern Worldwide, World Health Organization, UNICEF.

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