We’ve found, to our amazement, that only one other organization in the world is utilizing water testing before they come into a village and drill a well, build a tap, or bring other water filtration systems. This shocked us and motivated us to change the way we start our annual clean water training (which serve as launching pads for the local Biosand Filter businesses).
We never want to enter a village assuming we know what is best for them and with little more than our word for the villagers to trust. Starting this year, when we come to a village to offer a training, we’ll start every project using water testing kits. These kits are not difficult to use and can detect a wide range of chemical poisons through color-coded test strips. In this way, we can not only show in a very visual way the extent to which their water sources are polluted, but this also enables us to prioritize the villages in greatest need.
The most important part about the water testing is that we test the water again using the same materials after we’ve built the filters and run water through them. In this way, we can show the difference between the readings from the raw water source and the newly filtered water, clearly displaying the difference our filters have made.