Migrant Schools Clean Water Project - China

China's migrant population remains one of the most marginilized populations in the country. More than 130,000,000 people are estimated to be living on the peripheries of China's major urban centers working illegally. A significant and striking portion of these people travel with families in tow, setting up houses, incorporating in to villages and living on the outer edges of the cities literally and of society figuratively. With no social safety nets in place, these families and communities have no clear provisions of health care, no worker rights, and no assured access to an education for their children.

The schools under our focus all have serious water quality issues. Lack of clean water in China's urban centers is widespread and the majority of these schoolchildren have to then deal with the physical ramifications of this as many access all of their daily water consumption directly from the tap at school.

Goals overview

The goal of the project is to provide all 10 schools for migrant children in Beijing and Shanghai, China, with access to clean drinking water and hygiene. Each site will undergo comprehensive water testing, receive top-tier water purification equipment appropriate for urban instiutional settings in China, be a partner in our routine monitoring for both efficacy of the system and quality of the water, and be provided in country support and spare provisions to ensure the project's sustainability.

Current status

ACR staff members have over a decade of first-hand experience to support that our systems provide exceptionally safe, clean and good-tasting drinking water for urban sites with severe water quality issues. Our staff began working on water filtration projects in China in 2004.

In May 2008, ACR launched our Clean Water for Orphans Project, a progressive five-year mission that will assist more than 500 Chinese orphanages and welfare institutions and improve the lives of more than 200,000 orphaned children. As of April of 2009, we have installed pure water systems in every orphanage in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Shaanxi, Qinghai, Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Ningxia and Tianjin provinces.

Because of our success rate, the Chinese government has granted us approval to expand our scope and begin targeting schools for vulnerable children. The immediate focus then spotlighted migrant children- the most marginalized youth group outside of orphans in China.

Project plan

Our equipment is high-end purification and filtration equipment which requires less than 10 minutes per year of maintenance. As our project sites are all urban, and our systems are all premanufactured to our specifications based on years of working in China, the technological aspects of incorporating such technologies in to poor orphanages and schools has never been an issue.

With solid equipment, consistent support and monitoring, and adequate training each of our orphanage installs have been tremenously successful in remediating the health impacts seen in China's orphanages due to waterborne illnesses. We will now carry this over to the migrant school project.

Expected outcomes

• 10 clean water systems for 10 migrant schools
• 10 clean water stations for children and staff to access H2O
• Education on water and hygiene for 10 schools
• Training in routine maintenance
• In country staff to provide consistent monitoring + support

EQUIPMENT:
ACR’s purification equipment is custom made in the US to achieve consistent top-quality water purification standards through continuous removal of >99.99999% of all bacteria, >99.999% of all viruses and >99.95% of all parasitic cysts from contaminated water sources, while achieving >95% water recovery. We maintain equally high build quality standards which dictate that our equipment is able to operate consistently with limited electricity and fluctuating pressure and water sources, while at the same time requiring little maintenance in often disparate environments. All equipment is NSF certified and purchased at manufacturer cost pricing, enabling ACR to bring safe, reliable and standardized top-tier equipment to every project at a fraction of the cost that a US-based consumer would purchase similar technologies.

SUPPORT:
We have primary staff in Beijing and contracted installers and maintenance crews in Hunan (Changsha city), Guangdong (Guangzhou) and Jiangsu (Suzhou city) provinces as well as in country technological and provisional support from the manufacturer in Suzhou. The latter houses spare parts and provisions of every kind for our systems; in the event of a system failure our current track record is complete repair of any system in any province within 2 weeks time. We have had a 98% success rate with our systems and of the 2% that have malfunctioned we have remedied the situation within 2 weeks.

All sites have direct access to ACR China staff as well as US-based staff if any issues arise.

RELATIONSHIPS:
Due to our longstanding and hard-earned relationship with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China Association of Social Work, and Provincial level Civil Affairs Bureaus in all 31 provinces/municipalities, we are able to support any system in any region of the country in the event that a malfunction occurs.

Also, working with China-based NGOs that work solely on migrant children issues, we are able to gain access to and perform proper vetting of countless schools to ensure our work is needed and can be sustainable.

OVERSIGHT:
We check on every site via phone every 3 months for the first 2 years and then every 6 thereafter. We train at least two members of the staff at each orphanage how to maintain the system as well as a contracted plumber and electrician (hired and paid for by the orphanage). Coupled with our in country technicians and 24 hour call service we are able to mitigate any issues and provide consistent and real time support no matter how small.

WIth more than 6 years of on-the-ground experience working in and providing clean water to China's orphanages in nearly 2 dozen provinces, we can say without question that we have more direct experiential knowledge regarding working with urban water quality issues on behalf of children, and the proper steps necessary to ensure the sustainability of each and every project we undertake there, than any organization in existence.