THE CLEAN WATER STATION”
From our experiences with distributing medicines and water filtration systems to over 40 villages both in Thailand and in Myanmar, we found that one problem in particular has become increasingly relevant recently. Most of the villages do not have access to clean drinking water. They only have piped or ground water that are not filtered, making it necessary for them to boil the water and in some cases, to drink it right away.
We also have received feedback from those villages we have distributed the filter system to that they are having trouble getting water to reach all of their members. As the system we gave them only comes with a small bucket, the villagers are not able to make their own reservoir and so ended up running short of clean water because our filter takes too long to give everyone enough drinking water.
As a result, we solved this problem by adapting the model of clean water station that we have designed for Mae La-oon and Mae Ra Ma Luang refugee camps in Mae Hong Son and reduced the unnecessary parts that will make them easier to transport. We have cut off the steel stands and replace the small 50-liter tank with inflatable tank so that it can be placed on top of the big tank without a stand. We will increase the size of the clean water to 1,000 instead of 500 liters
Yet our solution does not stop here. The frequent droughts have caused many villages to run out of water reserves, and even when we provide them with water filters, this will not solve their problem of water scarcity. We thus work to make our Clean Water Station cover those villages that are in trouble of accessing water resources as well.
Numerous villages along the border of Salween and Moei rivers are in trouble of insufficient water resource. Almost all of these villages are situated deeper in the jungles- a distance of 4-12 km away from the rivers. They do not have ground water supply due to recent problem of draught aggravated. In such case, the clean water station alone will be less useful for them.
So we have designed add-on to the current clean water station. Our package of Clean Water Station for non-water access villages will include additional inflatable water tank reservoir with capacity of 5,000 liters of water. This reservoir will be used to store rain water during rainy season, and in case rain water has been used up, can still be used to keep water fetched from Salween river if necessary.