WAVES 4 WATER ECUADOR EARTHQUAKE RELIEF
A 7.8 earthquake rocked Ecuador on April 16th, Saturday evening, buckling overpasses, causing houses to collapse, and knocking out power in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s most populous city. Waves For Water is known for being highly experienced in disaster response, earning that credibility by working all of the major disasters over the past seven years – Haiti, Philippines, Japan, Nepal, Indonesia, Mexico, to name a few… and though these things happen in different countries, with a whole range of nuances (political, cultural, religious, etc), one thing always remains – the basic needs of every living human being on the planet: water, food, and shelter.
Artists Project Earth has contributed to the emergency funds from Waves 4 Water in the past, including Hurricane Sandy in 2013, and gladly donated again for the Equador disaster relief operation. Waves 4 Water utilised the emergency fund and launched a full scale clean-water disaster relief initiative using a two pronged approach:
1 – Addressing the immediate suffering of quake victims in the hardest hit areas.
2 – Creating a lasting local infrastructure that will work on long-term development and preparedness programs for years to come.
Please contribute to charity Artists Project Earth so we can help more projects like this on a regular basis. Donate now or browse more projects of this type.
A statement from Jon Rose, Waves 4 Water
equador4It’s been just over a month since the earth shook coastal Ecuador to its knees with a massive 7.8 earthquake. The quake was devastating, completely wiping out many of the quaint fishing communities along the coast. To top it off, roughly one month later, just as people were finding the courage to start sleeping inside again, two more 7-plus Richter-scale quakes shook the same areas within a 24 hr period. The damage this does physically is obvious, but the psychological ramifications are shattering on a whole other level. The constant fear that the ground beneath you and the walls around you might crack and fall at any moment is a highly anxious frequency to be stuck in.
I’ve seen it firsthand in other places we’ve responded, such as Haiti and Nepal. People are scared with acute PTSD that takes years to recover from. I even have it myself from all the years of working in these zones — in Nepal, for example, we had 5-10 quakes a day that were all 5.0 or bigger. You get used to it, but it’s unnerving… and still today when I’m walking in NYC and a subway goes by underneath my feet on the street, my first reaction is it’s a quake. My nervous system is now wired that way and always in defense mode for such an event. But at the end of the day, I get to go home to US and find some sort of peace and stability. I can’t imagine what the residents who don’t get to leave feel like living in a constant state of instability. It is truly a test of the human condition, and though ultimately we will always repair, rebuild, and move on, we will do it bearing the scars of these experiences forever.
From a Waves For Water perspective, I am happy with the progress we have made. This has been a very tough one, mostly due o the geographic predicament of the quake zone. There is a very big area affected by these quakes and access is limited. In Haiti for example the devastation was pretty tightly focused to a few areas. This time it’s spread out over hundreds of miles. So we keep chipping away at it, knowing that we can reach all the areas over time.
I often speak about our program from an empowerment perspective. In my opinion, the “teach a man to fish” metaphor is literally the only approach that should ever be taken in development or aid work — whether it’s disaster related, disease prevention, or long term development-style initiatives. This single notion, if properly implemented is what draws the distinction between a sustainable program and just the distribution of supplies.
Sinequadorce day one, W4W has put emphasis on the empowerment model for the simple reason that we ultimately want to work ourselves (the foreigners) out of the equation over time. This means spending however long it takes in the beginning phases of a program — in Haiti, for example, I spent 2 straight years there developing our program that is still thriving to this day and entirely operated and managed by Haitians. Because at the end of the day, we are not just installing a well or rain-catchment system, or passing out filters. We are connecting a problem directly with a solution — by way of local networks and team building, through intensive education and training, so that these solutions just become new tools for the local players we’ve enlisted to be able to help their communities on their own.
So, here in Ecuador, that is exactly what we’ve done. We have spent the better part of the past month building and cultivating local Ecuadorian teams in each of the hardest hit communities. These are individuals or groups that we’ve identified, enlisted, and empowered through our program are now the clean-water advocates of their communities — implementing water filter systems to families, schools, and tent camps, on a regular basis — with the proper follow up thereafter.
We are just one small organization, but with this approach we can have a very wide reach. And it’s working… so much so that one of our teams went into a new community a few days ago and met with the local leadership, and before our team was able to share who they were and what they were doing the local leader proceeded to tell them, “there is a really great organization in the area called Waves For Water that is doing fantastic work providing communities with access to clean water through local networks”. As you can imagine, that is the best case scenario — hearing about the very work we are doing and the positive impact it’s having from the most grass roots ground level. It was a nice surprise for our team to then tell those same local leaders that they were in fact W4W, and were there to now help their community.
To date, our teams throughout the region have implemented 2500+ water filter systems, in over 10 communities, such as:
Esmereldes
Cojimes
Pedernales
Jama
Canoa
Bahia
San Vicente
Manta
Portoviejo
Puerto Cayo
We feel that with the support that came in for this first phase we have really stretched the funds, maximizing the impact, and are laying an incredibly solid and sustainable foundation for the coming months. That said, in order to do this we now need to set our sights on securing new local and international long-term partnerships that can help us scale the program.
This is a pretty standard model for us in terms of disaster response programs:
Phase one is very time sensitive and focused on mitigating the immediate suffering due to the earthquake itself (by implementing our water filtration program).
Phase two, which we are embarking on now, is looking more at the long game — designing programs that are self sustaining and cover every aspect of need in each community. This includes rain-water harvesting systems, the installation of new wells and/or bore hole pumps, and filtration systems for every household. This is the comprehensive approach we have taken in virtually all the countries we operate in, around the world.
The hard work has already been done — our presence and the impact it has had equador-2throughout the region is undeniable and firmly in place. And we already have the data and testimonials to showcase this. So now, all we need are new partners that can provide the necessary resources to help us scale this already proven model.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this program is a real, viable way forward in the discussion of access to clean water for Ecuador. What’s at stake here is not just giving a family or village access to clean water, but rather an entire region, or state, or even the entire country over time. This is a solvable problem. Period. It just takes a collective consciousness and effort to make it a reality.
Lastly, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank some of the players who have helped us get this far down here: Ecuador Earthquake Recovery Fund, The Pamela Anderson Foundation, Airlink, The Water Bearers, World Ventures, APE, among others… In addition I’d like to throw a special shout out to a couple of our local “boots on the ground” partners that we have been fortunate enough to plug into — Proyecto Amor 7.8 in Puerto Cayo and Alfredo Harmsen and his Sathya Sai School in Bahia. Keep up the good work guys!
