Hydraid BioSand Water Filters - Haiti

The Safe Water Team,  in collaboration with Thirsting to Serve (Rotary District 6290) and other Team members recently shipped the fourth truck load of filters to Haiti since the earthquake.  The Team has funded 1,300 filters which have been shipped to Haiti by the United States Navy and the Project Handclasp program.  The filters are being implemented by Pure Water for the World.

Rotarians Respond with HydrAid Filters - Hope for Haiti

Rotarians respond to Haiti earthquake with HydrAid biosand water filters - Hope for Haiti.

www.thirstingtoserve.org

Grandville Rotary - Hope for Haiti - HydrAid filters

On March 22, 2010 Jim Bodenner made a presentation to the Grandville Rotary Club asking for support of the Hope for Haiti fundraising effort.  Thirsting to Serve which is the 501 C 3 organization of Rotary District 6290 is coordinating a fundraising effort to send 1,000 HydrAid BioSand Water filters to Haiti.  The filters will be shipped to Haiti by Project Handclasp and the United States Navy.  The first 300 filters are already in Haiti and the plan is to ship the remaining filters in the coming months.

Hotcakes for Haiti - Longhorn Restaurant

Attached is an Open Letter from Amy Deacon, the Managing Partner of the Longhorn Restaurant, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.   Amy and her team raised $5,000 for the Rotary District 6290 (Thirsting to Serve) fundraising effort to provide 1,000 HydrAid BioSand Water Filters for the people of Haiti.

On behalf of Thirsting to Serve we offer our thanks to Amy and her wonderful team at her Longhorn Restaurant in Tulsa.

Jim Bodenner

________________________________________

Open Letter From Amy Deacon:

The earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010 impacted the Tulsa Longhorn on a personal level.  One of our team members grew up in Haiti and both his and his wife’s entire family reside 5 miles outside of Porte of Prince.  It was agonizing for the team to watch Eddi’s pain of not knowing the well being of his family.  As excruciating as it was for us, none of us could fully understand the depths it tormented Eddie and his wife.

Within days of the earthquake, I received an email from a fellow Longhorn manger with a challenge from his parents who are involved with “Thirsting to Serve”; a non-profit organization that provides water filters to third world countries.  The need for safe drinking water is so great in Haiti that the requests for their filters far exceeded the available funds of this organization.  The challenge was for friends and family to consider purchasing a filter, or finding a way to help raise money to help with this great need.

My entire team approached me about doing something for not only Eddie’s family but for his country.  I shared the email and operation “Hotcakes for Haiti” was quickly under way, our goal $2000.  Our humble efforts were simply a $5 “All-you-can-eat” pancake breakfast and silent auction.

We started promoting the event with our guests, contacts and business connections.  We not only invited them out to breakfast but mentioned that we were having a silent auction in efforts to multiply our funds.  The community involvement became emotionally overwhelming.

On February 27^th at 7:00 am we opened our doors, pancake mix ready and fingers crossed.  Almost the entire staff was on hand, along with the “Ice Girls” from the Tulsa Oilier’s Hockey Team who came to wait tables, Jim and Sue Bodenner, representatives of Thirsting to Serve and the ones who sent out the email challenge, as well as surprise attendee Mike Bodenner, Managing Partner,  from the Longhorn Restaurant in Norridge, Illinois.

I don’t think there is a word in the English language that describes how emotional and moving this event was.  There are many great stories to come out of that day, however the most touching happened when we pulled Eddie out of the kitchen and showed him all the tables full of happy people, the ones checking out the silent auction items and the ones waiting in the lobby.  Extremely moved by the crowd he asked “Who are these people? Where did they come from?”  I tearfully replied “Eddie, these are your guests that you cook steaks for on a daily basis.  They came here to support you and your country. Your Longhorn family worked very hard promoting this event.”  He felt blessed by his team’s efforts to bring his country safe drinking water.  He mentioned “My people that survived the earthquake are now dying a slow death due to the polluted water; this means a lot to me.” I will just say Kleenexes were in short supply that day.

I am very proud to say that we raised just under $5,000 that day, which will provide safe drinking water to 750 people every day for the next ten years.  The Silent Auction brought in over $1,700 alone.  The donations that came in from not only our local businesses but our regular guests were unbelievably generous.  Eddie is completely unaware that the team is giving a portion of the funds to his family to help them rebuild.  On Wednesday, the majority of my staff will be on hand as we surprise Eddie and present him with this gift along with the Darden Dimes match.  

The US Navy will be picking up the filters we purchased and at no cost will safely deliver them into the hands of the correct people in Haiti to ensure that the Haitian people will receive the filters as intended. 

I just wanted to share you with you the heart of my team, and their desire to live our core values not only in our community, but in one far away.

Blessed beyond measure,

~Amy Deacon

Managing Partner

Team Tulsa

Lansing Rotarians - Hope For Haiti

Jim Bodenner made a presentation on March 19 to the Lansing, Michigan Rotary club regarding the HydrAid BioSand Water Filter and the effort by Michigan Rotarians from Rotary Districts 6360 and 6290 to raise funds to send HydrAid filters to Haiti.  Rotarians are raising funds to ship 1,000 filters to Haiti in collaboration with Project Handclasp and the United States Navy. 

Jim recently returned from Haiti where he saw first hand the critical need for food, shelter and water by hundreds of thousand of people impacted by the January earthquake in Haiti.  

Rotarians from Rotary District 6360 can support the Hope for Haiti effort  by donating to the Rotary District 6360 Foundation at:

HOPE FOR HAITI
Rotary District 6360 Foundation
% Shari Labrenz
198 West Crooked Lake Drive
Kalamazoo, MI  49009


Rotarians from Rotary District 6290 and others can support the same Hope for Haiti effort by donating to the Rotary District 6290 - 501 C 3 organization at www.thirstingtoserve.org

Invocation: Omar Keith Helferich PhD

Water Conference 2010 March 27: The Calvin College

Meeting the Challenge?

Lord as citizens in Michigan, the Great Lakes State, we are blessed to have access to a key element of life- water.   As Rotarians we are able to take as a given the benefits from this critical element beyond our daily needs to include;

- Water is recreation

- Water is a resource for our businesses and

- Water is even plentiful enough to become a commercial product to be sold

Through natural processes our water resources also serve us through beauty, health, and life.

In contrast many of our global neighbors through no fault of their own must see water in a different vision-

- water is a scarce resource requiring total family commitments just to acquire daily needs

- water, when acquired, is frequently filthy, contaminated, with resulting illness and often contributing to the death of their precious children.

Let us be reminded that these circumstances result in the death of 5,000 to 8,000 of our global neighborhood children each day.  One of our Rotarians Lillian Cos has written a short poem that should cause us to think about this critical element- water.

Lord we dare not ask you bless our feast of clean water

Till it is sent to the poorest and to the least.

We dare not drink deeply from our wells

Unless our thirsty brothers and sisters drink too.

Not only at this time, but every day

There are thirsty children who are dying while we pray.

Teach us to do with less, and so to share

From our abundance even more than we can spare.

As we go about our busy lives let us apply the four way test – Truth, Fairness, Goodwill and Better Friendships, and Beneficial to All to Meet the Challenge of creating smiles on multitudes of our global neighborhood children as they are able to change their vision from  water is death to water is life.  Amen.