Abundant Water

Welcome to another newsletter. Over the past two months we have made some exciting progress. Please read on to hear more.
 

Trialling the Filter Systems in the villages

The Lao team of Nou Kham and Chantana, and now Khek, are continuing to develop the village education program. Here you see a demonstration of the filter system to villagers.

The filters are now being trialled in about 35 households across 12 villages. As you will see from the photo of a system in use the system is very different from what was originally proposed. This is a result of extensive consultation and feedback from the villagers themselves. The upper container (black plastic) is kept full of untreated water which siphons through a clear hose, with the cylindrical filter attached to the end, to the lower clean water container with tap. With such a siphon these systems are capable of filtering up to 36 litres of water per day, which is considered sufficient for a household of 6 people.
 

Compound Landscaping is Now Ready For the First Tour Group

The eating area now has four hammocks. As you can see these are popular with the worker’s children too.

Tony, head tour leader with Stray Asia, tries his hand at rolling a pinch pot filter. The result was not bad and thanks to Tony, we’ll be hosting the first Stray tour groups very soon.

We have rebuilt the small kiln and given it an all weather covering.

 
This is how it looks when firing filters.
 

Our First Village Training will begin on Nov 12

Here are the training resources for the first training course. The booklet was prepared by Noukham and the training DVD was filmed by Tyrie Brown and edited on donated equipment by volunteers.
 

Abundant Water welcomes new Corporate Sponsor GHD

AW team member Claudia Vannithone met with GHD Business Group Manager Christine Allard in Canberra on Tuesday 27th September to thank her for GHD’s corporate sponsorship of the Abundant Water project in Lao PDR. As has become the custom, Claudia presented Christine with a prototype clay pot water filter and a certificate signed by Nou Kham. Christine said that “GHD has been involved in major water projects around the world and is both proud and pleased to be associated with Abundant Water and the work they are doing to provide clean drinking water to the people in Laos. The creation of a sustainable capability and the capacity building taking place in neighbouring villages is as important as the supply of clean water itself”. Abundant Water wishes to thank Christine for championing the Abundant Water project within GHD.

Donation From Hall Rotary

On Tuesday 1st November Barbara and Stuart were the guests of the Hall Rotary Club, ACT, where they were presented with a generous donation for the Lao Village Training Program. Hall Rotary are exploring links with Thai Rotary Clubs so they can propagate the Abundant Water technology and model in Northern Thailand. Sunny will be visiting Chiang Mai to establish contacts to facilitate this process. This is an exciting prospect for Abundant Water because it enables us to further spread our technology and methodology through partnership and collaboration without over-committing our limited human and material resources.
 

We Have a New Staff Member

As of the 30th of October we now have three full time staff. We have hired Khek as an understudy to Noukham. She will spend the next two months learning from Noukham and then once she is ready, she will venture into the field to run village based training courses independently.