August 29, 2011
When we arrive at the Barina Agricultural School in Malaki, Sierra Leone in a couple of weeks, we will have ‘teaching tools’ that communicate the importance of drinking clean water and washing hands. Teachers may understand the importance of hand washing, but do not encourage the practice in students, we are
Read MoreAuthor Archives Caroline Di Diego
Can We Influence People to Turn Off the Faucet?
The most important thing I have learned in my past few months with Bank-On-Rain is that the social engineering behind a project provides infinitely more obstacles than any of the mechanical or civil engineering challenges. Good data, planning, calculations, and material acquisition paired with experienced engineers like Ken Blair
Read MoreIs there a Recipe for Success in Haiti?
Haiti “is positively carpeted with well-meaning but clueless do-gooders. Haitians are pretty accustomed to this, so they have very low expectations.” This is a quote from an email I received from Sara, the mother of a good friend of mine, who lived and worked in Haiti in the mid
Read MoreGod Is Watching!
In a culture where things tend to disappear whenever you aren’t looking, how can you ensure that shipped items will make it safely to a small village in Africa? Bank-On-Rain is planning to install a rain collection system in August for the Barina Agricultural School in Makali and those
Read MoreOne Man, Twenty-Six Wells….
Eugene Nelson, succeeds where many non-profit organizations many times larger fail. Eugene is an electrical engineer at Intel and he gets one month off every year during which he travels to a small village in Cambodia where he installs wells and dramatically improves the quality of life for the village
Read MoreCan You Find Local Solutions for Storing Rainwater?
Here in the US, we most often use plastic tanks or ‘heavy-duty’ metal tanks with a strong plastic membrane interior, for our rainwater storage. But what happens in remote areas when we either can’t bring or don’t have these plastic or metal tanks? Where do we go then for charity
Read MoreFinding A Way….
On June 10, 2011 Katie and Sam were training, gearing up to ride for their lives for safe drinking water, when Katie cruising at 25 mph took a crash on the Santa Cruz Mountains. She got up thinking she had nothing but a bruise and a scratch only to find
Read MoreCan We Learn From Nature?
What if we copy or mimic nature, can we gain valuable information on collecting and storing water? That’s what Biomimicry is……. copying nature, and in our case solving a problem related to water, a diminishing resource. Look at plants—succulents in particular. Succulents have adapted to extremely arid climates via
Read MoreRide for their Lives.
We wrote about Katie Spotz in our post “Glamour is Not Enough” and about her adventures as an extreme athlete, raising money for clean drinking water and inspiring all of us to do more than we think we can! Now she and Sam Williams are going to “Ride for their lives” The Race
Read MoreIs My Water Safe to Drink?
Filtration and Treatment (often called Sanitization ) seems to be a most elusive and complicated topic in Rainwater Harvesting (collection & storage) for the home owner, as well as for the designer or operator. There are no general definitive answers as to what device or treatment is appropriate for all systems. The
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