Posted by Sam McCurdy:
On Wednesday 30th April, twenty Rotarians and guests arrived at Disaster Aid Australia (DAA) at 92 Doveton Avenue in Eumemmerring, for an informative vocational visit. The guests included visiting Rotarian, Mahendra Bulsara, from the Rotary Club of Valsad in District 3060 in India.
DAA is a project of the Rotary Club of Greater Dandenong and Endeavour Hills. It is registered as an Australian charity and its' mission is to provide and assist in delivering sustainable humanitarian aid relevant to people affected by natural and other disasters, in developing countries.
The visitors were hosted by CEO, Brian Ashworth, and Cherie Ramsay. Cherie provided a guided tour of the facility and explained the structure and international activities of the organisation, as well as answering questions. Her role is managing the accounting software and she also assists with policy development and general administration tasks.
Brian provided information on the design and operation of Sky Hydrants, which are used in disaster areas to convert local contaminated water to clean, bacteria-free drinking water at a cost of $1 per day. He proved the efficiency of the process by drinking a glass of the clean water produced by the demonstration model from a small tank of contaminated water.One benefit of the Sky Hydrant as a means of producing clean drinkable water, is that it requires no electrical power, but depends solely on gravity for the water movement. Therefore, it can be installed and used effectively in remote areas with no power source.
Following the tour, we enjoyed a meal before Brian treated us to a PowerPoint presentation of the DAA operations, their achievements and their sources of funding. Their main role in disaster situations is to provide clean drinking water to the affected communities and to assist them in purchasing suitable materials to enable them to construct new homes. The idea is to make the community self-sufficient, rather than DAA constructing the homes on their behalf.
The statistics showed that in many cases, the drinking water used by the community was contaminated even before the disaster and the sickness and mortality levels among children were high. Once clean drinking water became available using Sky Hydrants, the levels dropped very significantly.
The visit proved to be very interesting and informative.