Water and Sanitation
District 6380 has a long and proud history of bringing safe water to people around the world.
- Eileen Heasley, of the Troy Rotary Club is responsible for a number of projects in Nepal, Lebanon, and Central America. She and her husband John founded A Vision for Clean Water that runs annual workshops to train people to execute water and sanitation projects (see links to the left).
- Gary Sobotta, the District's Water Ambassador, became interested in water projects through one of the Vision for Clean Water's workshops. He managed a Global Grant that facilitated and trained 10 rural Ecuadorian communities to install a total of 654 biosand filters in 634 households and 20 schools. See his slide presentation to the left.
- Our district is involved in a $4 million collaboration with USAID to provide water and latrines in six regions of Ghana. See details in Gary's presentation to the left.
- John and Joyce Joyce – Sterling Heights Rotary.Have worked for 11 years with the Rotary Club of Bonao Dominican Republic developing a local infrastructure to provide biosand filters to families with children.They have been supported by eight Rotary grants during this time.
- Kamal Shouhayib and David Donnellon – Troy Rotary. With Eileen Heasley, they helped initiate a project which began with a small number of public schools in Lebanon receiving clean water. This project has grown to involve every Rotary club in Lebanon and over 1,200 public schools will receive clean water costing over $3,000,000.
- The Rotary Clubs of Rochester, Chatham, Tilbury, and Wallaceburg have supported a Global Grant to build a water collection, storage and distribution system with waste water treatment in Nuevo Edén Guatemala - the home of Casa Colibrí. The work is ongoing (2020) - the photo above shows the construction of the community septic tank.
And, following this theme of clean water, the John Lawrence and the Chatham Sunrise club have done tremendous work to improve the management of our local watershed.