what does the military use?
This concept is not new. I remember years ago as a member of a MLM company called NSA (National Safety Associated) now known as JuicePlus+, we marketed a similar product made with granular activated charcoal. Our units sat on the counter tops and filtered water as it came out of the tap, ...or hooked under the sink or to the water reservoir in the home, to filter it before it came out of the tap. We had shower units, under the sink units, counter top units and portable units. In 1991, there was some very severe flooding in the US midwest, and no one had access to clean drinking water. One of my colleagues, an extremely enterprising Chinese Canadian bought about 20,000 units, and hopped on a plane to the disaster area. He was sold out within days. Synergy Worldwide also has a portable filtering device as well. You could dip it into a lake, river or stream, and be assured the water that came from the teat would be safe enough to drink.
As for the filtering capacity of those units... that I don't know. The only advantage Pritchard's system may have over others currently on the market, might be the size of the pores. I don't see it as a means of preventing long walks to get water though. From my understanding, those in third world countries aren't walking 8 hours a day to collect safe drinking water. They're walking 8 hours a day to collect water period. Most often the water collected is very unsafe.
I like the idea of distributing portable devices to disaster areas, as a temporary solution, but I think the overall solution is to provide wells to tap into underground aquifers, digging wells for communities that will provide clean drinking water, which will allow children to go to school and be educated.
A marvellous organization that does just that is "charity: water" founded by Scott Harrison
Here is his story:
In 2004, I left the streets of New York City for the shores of West Africa. I'd made my living for years in the big Apple promoting top nightclubs and fashion events, for the most part living selfishly and arrogantly. Desperately unhappy, I needed to change. Faced with spiritual bankruptcy, I wanted desperately to revive a lost Christian faith with action and asked the question: What would the opposite of my life look like?
I signed up for volunteer service aboard a floating hospital with a group called Mercy Ships, a humanitarian organization which offered free medical care in the world's poorest nations. Operating on surgery ships, they'd built a 25-year track record of astonishing results yet I'd never heard of them.
Top doctors and surgeons from all over the world left their practices and fancy lives to operate for free on thousands who had no access to medical care. I soon found the organization to be full of remarkable people. The chief medical officer was a surgeon who left Los Angeles to volunteer for two weeks - 23 years ago. He never looked or went back. I took the position of ship photojournalist, and immediately traveled to Africa. At first, being the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court felt strange. I traded my spacious midtown loft for a 150-square-foot cabin with bunk beds, roommates and cockroaches. Fancy restaurants were replaced by a mess hall feeding 400+ Army style. A prince in New York, now I was living in close community with 350 others. I felt like a pauper.
But once off the ship, I realized how good I really had it. In new surroundings, I was utterly astonished at the poverty that came into focus through my camera lens. Often through tears, I documented life and human suffering I'd thought unimaginable. In West Africa, I was a prince again. A king, in fact. A man with a bed and clean running water and food in my stomach.
I fell in love with Liberia - a country with no public electricity, running water or sewage - Spending time in a leper colony and many remote villages, I put a face to the world's 1.2 billion living in poverty. Those living on less than $365 a year - money I used to blow on a bottle of Grey Goose vodka at a fancy club. Before tip.
Our medical staff would hold patient intake "screenings" and thousands would wait in line to be seen, many afflicted with deformities even Clive Barker hadn't thought of. Enormous, suffocating tumors - cleft lips, faces eaten by bacteria from water-borne diseases. I learned many of these medical conditions also existed here in the west, but were taken care of - never allowed to progress. The amount of blind people without access to the 20-minute cataract surgery that could restore their sight astonished me - all part of this new world.
Over the next eight months, I met patients who taught me the meaning of courage. Many of them had been slowly suffocating to death for years and yet pressing on. Praying, hoping, surviving. It was an honor to photograph them. It was an honor to know them.
Charity.
For me, charity is practical. It's sometimes easy, more often inconvenient, but always necessary. It's the ability to use one's position of influence, relative wealth and power to affect lives for the better. charity is singular and achievable.
There's a biblical parable about a man beaten near death by robbers. He's stripped naked and lying roadside. Most people pass him by, but one man stops. He picks him up and bandages his wounds. He puts him on his horse and walks alongside until they reach an inn. He checks him in and throws down his Amex. "Whatever he needs until he gets better."
All those passing by could have helped, but only one did. Only one had compassion.
The dictionary defines charity as simply the act of giving voluntarily to those in need. It's taken from the word "caritas," or simply, love. In Colossians 3, the Bible instructs readers to "put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness."
Although I'm still not sure what that means, I love the idea. To wear charity.
– Scott Harrison, 2006
To see a video of Scott discussing the genesis of charity water, click here:
http://vimeo.com/3442394
