ACR, A Child’s Right: Clean Water Project
I’ve talked about this organization before, and last year we all oohhed and aahhed over the pictures from one of their trips to China. If you missed those pictures, or wish to see them again, you can get to them by going here, and then going to the bottom of the page and clicking to view the next screen, and then clicking the top box, labeled China 2007. There are hundreds of pictures to look through.
They are now launching a much bigger project. Over the next five years they plan to install their water filtration systems into 400 orphanages across China.
How many of our children have come home malnourished and with a raging case of giardia that they’ve had for possibly months or years? I’ve known of some babies who have had to go through several rounds of antibiotics over the course of several months to finally clean their system up so they could begin to get healthy. Giardia isn’t the only thing our kids can come home with from drinking unclean water, but it’s probably the most well known. Although I’ve also heard some horror stories of babies coming home with worms, too. I’ll spare ya’ll the details.
Boiling the water for five minutes usually kills these things, but since so many babies come home with these bugs it would seem that sometimes the water doesn’t get boiled long enough, or perhaps there is some contamination that happens when a pot that held the pre-boiled water then holds the boiled water without being washed first. However it happens, it happens. But ACR’s water systems kill the bugs before they ever hit the faucet. You can read more about their filtration systems here:
www.a-childs-right.org/water2.html
They have a page up explaining a little about this project:
www.a-childs-right.org/china.html
This page has music, but there is a way to turn it off, near the top on the right hand side there will be a small “Sound: ON”, click the “ON” and it turns to “Off”, and the music stops.
Once you are on their China Project page you can click on “Orphanage Info” to see a list of the orphanages in each province that they are working with.
And, if you wish to donate to help them implement this project, there is a link at the top of the China Project page labeled “Contact/Sponsor”, or you can go to this page:
www.a-childs-right.org/donate.html
It takes $3,500 to sponsor an orphanage. I’d love to see the various orphanage parenting groups come together to raise the funds so that the orphanage that once cared for their children can receive one of these systems.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Yesterday on “Ellen” she was talking about this subject and how the lack of clean safe drinking water is the no. 2 killer of children in the world. Thanks RQ for highlighting this important issue.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I really like this organization – we’ve donated to them several times and it means a lot to me that we get the e-mailed updates showing what they did with the money, including pictures. It just feels like a very direct way to help people, and you get the sense that they really need and use every dollar. The United Way or the Red Cross or whatever can help make big change, but to me giving to those organizations feels very “corporate” (and I shudder to think how much the spend on things other than providing tangible identifiable benefits to people!) We also sponsor kids through HTS and Save the Children, which are both great organizations, but I have a special affinity for A Child’s Right that I can’t really put my finger on. I hope they are successful with this big goal!
March 19th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
This is such a great thing that this organization is doing, it is this type of thing that really can and does make a difference in the world. This really touches my heart.
And their website is making me want my baby even more- maybe it is the music grabbing my emotions :)
LID 2/28/06
March 19th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I agree with my3sons on this one, “special affinity for A Child’s Right that I can’t put my finger on”. I feel the same way and I’m so glad you posted this RQ. I decided last year instead of donating a little bit here and there to various organizations, I would pick one to focus my giving. This one is it. There is a very tangible end result that can have such a huge impact on the lives of children worldwide. I’m looking forward to following this project as well.
LID 1-16-06
March 19th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
What a great idea to have adoptive families, friends, etc. raise money to sponsor an orphanage. I remember how hard it was to take care of one baby for two weeks with bad water (washing bottles, taking tubbies, etc.). I can’t imagine what the poor orphanage workers go through on a daily basis trying to keep the babies healthy. Do they let you choose an orphanage and then lobby for it?
March 19th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I went to the site, and it says that a $3500 donation allows you to choose an orphanage to sponsor. I’m not finding instructions, though, on how to do that. Can someone else find it?
March 19th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
FindingHope: I believe if you click on the Contact/Sponsor button on the China Project page, you can enter your contact information along with the orphanage you wish to sponsor. That will put you in contact with someone who will then email you information on the donation process.
March 19th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I hate to be a cynic, but one of these systems was put in at the orphanage that my kid comes from, but the kids are still coming out of that orphanage with giardia. We were told that the problem is likely to do with poor sanitary practices (i.e. handwashing) on the part of the staff.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
To ratgirl: yes, I remember the orphanage and we actually sent our staff there immediately, thanks to someone in your group notifying us about the giardia incident. We did multiple water quality tests to verify if it was an issue with the system or an issue with hygiene. It was the latter and that is, sadly, something we cannot mitigate with the water systems. However, this is an exceptional incident and one that bucks the current trend with any of our installations in any country.
The majority of installs see an immediate and sharp decline in stomach maladies, dyssentary, failure to thrive, etc, amongst the children. This is also the case at the orphanage you mention as the incidence rate of diarrheal illnesses was significantly reduced after our installation. We cannot, though, stop every single occurrence from getting through.
The reality is that in the poorer orphanages (and this was one of the poorest I have seen in a while), and even in some of the better funded ones at times, hygiene education is lacking. We do perform handwashing classes and training when the government allows. However, the majority of cases of giardia (and other bacteriological and viral infections like this) in these institutional settings comes from unclean water. This is our primary focus and the impacts are tremendous on many levels.
Unfortunately, there are breaks in the system when poor food preparation or very unsanitary conditions sneak through the barrier we set up. On the plus side, these are very few and far between once the water is treated.
Thanks for the reminder to all parents that the system being set up is not impenetrable. It is, though, a massive firewall against the issues most commonly seen affecting health and development for the children within these sites.
Thanks to Eve for sending this along for me to comment. Thanks to RQ for her support of our work!
Hope this finds all the parents well as you are home with your children or waiting to unite with your child.
Best, Eric
Eric Stowe, Director
A Child’s Right
March 19th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
How do you know if your child has giardia? What are the sypmtoms and can you take anything with you from the doctor to treat your child in case your child has it when you get her/him?
March 20th, 2008 at 3:17 am
I love what this organization is doing for the children. And what another poster said is true. I volunteer for world vision and the numbers are staggering. Back when I started working with WV there were 30,000 children globally dying everyday to preventable illnesses like diarreah from dirty water and the like. Due to them and other organizations like ACR, the number is down to 27,000 a day. That may not seem like much, but multiply it out over a year and that’s 1,095,000 more children LIVING a year. It’s hard to wrap our Western minds around so many children dying from such “simple” things.
Thanks for bringing attention to this again RQ.
March 20th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Does anybody know how many orphanages are in the international adoption programme and how many exist in total in china. I was looking at the clean water programme and trying to count up numbers of orphanages per region. Perhaps Eric stowe has information that could shed some light on the number of orphanages in China.
Please reply
March 20th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Hi there,
The last conversation I had with the government in December there were 600+ orphanages countrywide. A significant number of these are consolidating/merging/relocating/closing (due to a number of different factors) and in a few years this number should be much closer to our 400 target range.
As with all things related to statistics in China, someone else will have different numbers and a completely different take on things- but this is our understanding from working fairly closely with the government…
Best, Eric
March 20th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Eric
Thankyou
March 20th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Providing access to clean water is very important. However, Pinkpunch, I’d just like to make the point that the primary cause of the majority of deaths in young children due to diarrhea is inadequate breastfeeding…UNICEF puts the figure at 1.5 mill a year and recent research indicates that the no 1 intervention to decrease mortality is breastfeeding support programs for mothers. Now obviously in situations where children do not have mothers available and where wet nursing is not common such as in Chinese orphanages, providing clean water removes one important risk factor.
Hey and wouldn’t you know it, my anit spam word is formula!
March 20th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
First of all, I would love to say thank you to A Child’s Right for installing a water system in my little girl’s orphanage. I truly appreciate all of those who sponsored and donated time and money for clean water.
Also, I think it is still important to have your child tested for giardia. We had our little girl tested for it and she tested positive (both daughters from China did- but only one daughter’s orphanage had the system). The test is easy (and a bit gross :) ) but important. (I was surprised that both girls tested positive because they did not seem to be in pain or have symptoms- but I have learned they have high pain tolerance). Anyway, I share this not to discourage sending money to A Child’s Right (we will donate to this great organization) but to make sure parents still test their child even though the system is in place.
(My anti-spam word is Jiangxi – the province our baby is from)