Author Archives: Zachary Hunter

Meeting With the Biosand Filter Supplier

Today we met with Rama Chandra, the man in charge of building our Biosand Filters. His work area seemed to be following the CAWST suggestions on how to make BSF’s. It looked like it was in good shape and has about 500 filters in storage. We can’t wait to give them to some villages!

Rama Chandra not only showed us his workplace, but also let us visit two villages. The first one already got water filters a while ago from SAPWII, they seemed very happy and were excited to see us. We then visited Nelavagilu, a village that does not yet have filters and we have decided to help. The money will be donated in a couple of days and then in about two months the filters

will be installed and the villagers will know how to use them. When we arrived in Nelavagilu over a hundred people were waiting for us! We couldn’t believe it! This is the first village we’re going to pay for and with just $1,000 more we’ll pay for our second village
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We’ve found a fantastic partner to work with in India to install water filters in a village

Things are falling into place!  We’re excited.  This is going to be a busy couple of months for us.

We’re in the middle of a four-month stay in India.  Within the last week, we talked to two exceptional people from the of the South Asia Pure Water Initiative, Mike Lipman (in the United States) and Ram Gauda (in India).  Their organization’s goal is to install thousands of these types of biosand water filters in India.  They’re a small an focused organization like us; they seem like they’re going to be a fantastic partner to work with.  We’ve decided to help them.

SAPWII bio sand water filters (image from SAPWII.org)

 

This coming Saturday, we’re going to travel with Ram to see:

  • The factory that they use to build the bio sand water filters.
  • A village that has had dozens of bio sand water filters installed.
  • A village that is in need of approximately 100 biosand water filters.

An update with more photos and details is coming soon.

Photo credit: sapwii.org