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A Local Solution to a World-Wide Problem

Wine to Water

The 15 students and one staff member who traveled to the Dominican Republic over winter break last year learned quickly how critical drinking water is in a country where many people collect rainwater runoff in buckets or haul water from streams. “If it didn’t rain, we didn’t have water,” remembers Ryan Mahan, one of the group’s student leaders.

It was a good lesson for the students, who volunteered for 10 days, through the College’s Alternative Break Program, with a nonprofit, Wine to Water, that works to bring clean water to people in need around the world. In the Dominican Republic, the organization’s workers make ceramic water filters that are sold to households for a nominal fee – and that remove bacteria that cause diseases including typhoid and cholera.

In addition to working in the factory, where they also bunked, the students went into the community to provide hygiene education to kids, distribute filters, and make follow-up visits to households already using the filters. “We could see how the filters had actually impacted families,” said Will Holden, the other student leader. “In every house, they were telling me how their stomach pains are gone and how their lives have been changed because they’ve started drinking clean water. They showed us how important access to clean water is.”

Back home, the students are determined to continue the good work by forming a campus chapter of Wine to Water. “It’s not a Dominican Republic issue; it’s a world-wide issue,” says Mahan. “Over 750 million people lack clean water, and 840,000 die from water-related illness each year. Two billion people lack basic sanitation.”

It’s a great thing to go to the Dominican Republic and volunteer, notes student participant Emily Kenney, but, she says, “you can’t just leave everything you learned down there. You have to bring it back and share your stories.”

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