Clean Water for Orphans Project - China

China's orphan population remains one of the most marginilized populations in the country. The institutional settings that the children grow up in are deleterious to both their health and development. Lack of clean water in China's urban centers is widespread and the majority of these institutionalized children have to then deal with the physical ramifications of this as they access all of their daily water consumption directly from the tap.

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.

We have approval to work in all 31 provinces/municipalities by the Chinese government. The Shanxi Provincial Civil Affairs Bureau as well as all 10 orphanages have granted permission for our work to begin, with at least 2 months notice for preparation purposes.

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 Chinese orphanages, the technological aspects of incorporating such technologies in to poor orphanages have 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.

The goal of the project is to provide all 10 orphanages in Shanxi Province, 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.

Goals

• 10 clean water systems for 10 orphanages
• 10 clean water stations for children and staff to access H2O
• Education on water and hygiene for 10 orphanages
• 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 have complete and unfettered access into all of China's state-run orphanages. Presently totalling more than 600. With this access, we are able to support any system in any region of the country in the event that a malfunction occurs.

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, we can say without question that we have more direct experiential knowledge of the inner machinations of China's Social Welfare Institutes and the proper steps necessary to ensure the sustainability of each and every project we undertake there.