Women and children in Ghana gather around a well to get fresh drinking water.
The Murray Rotary Club is looking for students or faculty interested in working on an International Rotary clean water project in the Sunyani district of Ghana.
Walter Hughes, of Rocky Mount, Va., presented a video about the project last summer, and the project is one of four concurrent Rotary International grants since 2006.
Twenty-five percent of all deaths in children under the age of five are attributed to unsanitary water, according to Water.org.
“The club is looking to students to get involved in a worthwhile international project,” Martin Tracy, director of vocational and international service committee of the Murray Rotary Club.
There is an organization on campus who works alongside this project called Catch the Wave.
Tracy said Catch the Wave collaborates with the Living Waters of the World, which is a Christian ministry that provides sustainable clean water to communities in need.
Mutually beneficial relationships between volunteers and communities are also fostered in order to build support systems for installing water purification system in 25 developing countries, like Honduras, Guatemala and Kenya.
The club is supporting a grant that will provide Ghana with 11 new boreholes. Boreholes are deep holes in the ground used to find a source of water.
Three repaired boreholes, 76 new bathrooms, 20 computers at three different high schools and training for local contractors to install and maintain the toilets, are also part of the services being provided by the grant, according to a press release regarding the project.
In the future, there may be training opportunities in well repair, installation of micro-toilets in Ghana with a Rotary group in September.
Tracy said since students may have difficulty volunteering because of their class schedules, they could get involved by promoting the project via social media and by contacting local businesses who may want to donate to the project.
Story by Brittany Risko, Staff writer