Frank Evert, Philip Turnier

The morning after the Drop in the Bucket auction, Vilai Bouttaphom and myself left for Haiti. We were in Haiti less than 24 hours after the final bid was accepted at the auction. This trip was a life changing experience for me. At the very least, it was heartbreaking. I would like to share just a little about it with you. As you can imagine, after an earthquake there is a great deal of confusion. Some people are faced with breaking the law in order to survive.

The media emphasizes this negative aspect but unfortunately they don’t always show you the good things people are doing. I was there for 10 days and saw a lot of good people doing great work. Many are working behind the scenes and don’t want recognition. An organization that deserves recognition is Clean Water for Haiti. This great organization made us feel like working out the details, whereby, we will be partnering with them on a project in the mountain of Ivoire (pronounced Ee-vwa). We will be bringing you more information on this project in the future. Verbo Jean Julien, is another who deserves recognition. He is a part of the Haitian Timoun Foundation. Verbo was kind enough to pick us up at the airport and bring us to his home town, three hours away.

Current Watering Hole

Once Vilai and I saw the devastation and the water the children were drinking we were angry and sick. We came upon a truck delivering water and stopped to talk deliver water for us to the places that were really in need. When we realized this was not a viable plan, we turned to Verbo and asked him to help us find another company we could trust. This brings us to Philip Turnier, who runs DOM Wa- ter. After less than an hour we had a deal and plan in place for relief efforts. Water Without Borders, with help from Verbo Jean Julien and Philip Turnier, is now supplying two trucks of water to the community of Jacmel City. We are in the process of training people on water safety. These efforts are costing WWB approximately $175 a week, a large portion of our budget. If you know of a church, company or someone that can help us fund these relieve efforts, please contact me.

Water Without Borders has teamed up with Villanova University on an international water project. The project is at a boys home called Amigo de Jesus in Honduras.  With WWB supplying all the parts and filters needed, the B.S. Civil & Environmental Engineering  students were able to  install a water purification system and hopefully avoid any further water born diseases.  A special thank you to  Dennis O’Donnell,  Anthony Granese, Christian Ryan Paggi,  Andrea Welker, and Bridget Wadzuk for making this possible.