LAST CALL: Project H Will Fund a Lifestraw for Mumbai for $25
by Mike Chino
Building off the success of the Lifestraw Personal water filtration device, Vestergaard Frandsen’s new Lifestraw Family system provides 15,000 liters of clean drinking water to one household. And now, you can fund the delivery of one Lifestraw Family system to a slum community in Mumbai for $25 through Project H Design, an organization founded by Emily Pilloton that promotes and delivers life improving product designs to global communities (we’ve funded 100 already and still going!). Project H is currently gathering funds for their August 15th deadline, and they will deliver the systems this December, in collaboration with Berkeley-based Haath Mein Sehat as the first step in a bigger examination of local water sanitation issues. With more than a billion people lacking access to safe drinking water and five million people dying of water-related disease every year, here’s an opportunity to make a small but very real difference.
Donate via Paypal at Project H here.
The project is a joint venture with Berkeley-based Haath Mein Sehat (Health In Hand) Mumbai, who will be on site in Mumbai this summer to conduct testing, user acceptance interviews, and follow up visits with families receiving the Lifestraw systems.
The Lifestraw Family system is an amazing point-of-use water filtration device designed and manufactured by Vestergaard Frandsen. It does not require electricity or batteries, making it ideal for use in both rural and urban contexts in the developing world. It eliminates 99.9% of waterborne disease bacteria, parasites, and viruses, bringing clean drinking water quickly and reliably, and preventing life-threatening disease from spreading through unclean water. One system effectively filters 15,000 liters (about a 2 year’s supply) of drinkable water.
+ Project H Design
+ Vestergaard Frandsen: Lifestraw
+ Haath Mein Sehat (Health In Hand) Mumbai
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At the risk of triggering outcry, I think an alternative approach to this issue may work better. When Apollo 13\’s oxygen system failed, Mission Control gave their engineers that materials available to the astronauts, saying \”This is all they have: make a replacement.\” Perhaps the challenge should not be \”World, fund the purchase of devices,\” but \”World, here are the materials available to these people at risk: with only these materials, build them a water filtration system.\” Then we train them to be self-sufficient.
My .02,
-Adam Keck