Oliver Gould is one such person, running the half-marathon twice in one day in memory of his good friend Jessica Gunn, who was sadly taken from her family and friends last Summer. Oliver remembers that “there are two things that Jessica was hugely passionate about throughout her life, the beauty of Nature and people. Her love for these two things really defined her by showing us all how enormously gentle and caring she was”. 

Jessica was a supporter of one of Wherever the Need’s collaborative projects in Kenya, which Oliver is choosing to support in memory of her.

Please help us support Oliver, by donating through his
Virgin Money Giving page or by cheering him on the day!

From each purchase £150 will be donated to Wherever The Need *

 
There are only 40 of the 100 silk-screen prints left, each signed and numbered by the artist. This wonderful image of Albert Einstein is an official study for the painting ‘Einstein & The Jealous Monk’ by Chris Gollon, now hanging in the permanent collection of Huddersfield Art Gallery alongside works by Bacon, Sickert and also Sir Jacob Epstein’s bust of Einstein.

The critical acclaim for Chris Gollon’s work is growing. He and his gallery are long-term supporters of ours and we are thrilled that they are continuing to help Wherever the Need.

To purchase one of these beautiful silk-screen prints (unframed) simply buy online from IAP Fine Art, London.

To get your £50 discount and to ensure £150 is donated to WTN, at the online checkout enter the discount code: WTN2012

If you prefer to buy a framed print, contact David Tregunna at IAP Fine Art (david@iapfineart.com or 0844 561 1833) to arrange framing and delivery. But don’t delay, since the offer ends March 14th, the anniversary of Albert Einstein’s birthday!

If you’d like to learn more about Chris Gollon’s work, please visit his website or download the brand new iPad Gollon app.

* £120 out of every £150 donated will go directly to Wherever the Need’s projects.

However, regardless of the country the basis of our work is the same – using sanitation, water and livelihoods to help people out of poverty. It is the good health and income generation model that we employ successfully in every project.

Read the newsletter here (PDF 2.7mb)

You may have heard on the news about the cyclone that recently devastated south-east India. Tamil Nadu, the region in which many of Wherever the Need’s projects are based, has been badly hit – the cyclone has devastated the lives of the people and communities with whom we work so closely.

Infrastructure, services and facilities are severely impaired and damaged; towns and villages are without electricity and clean water; many people have been left homeless.

Water supplies are polluted and there is a genuine concern that there will be an outbreak of diseases such as diarrhoea or cholera

We want to use our expertise and knowledge of the region to get sanitation and water facilities to where they are most needed and we need your help.

Please donate now.

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£25

will pay for a water filter which will enable people on the ground to access clean, safe water

£500

will buy a mobile eco-sanitation unit, by-passing the need for infrastructure to provide much-needed toilet facilities

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Read the full newsletter here (PDF 1.4mb)

According to demographic and health surveys, water and sanitation woes have plagued the developing nations and children are the worst sufferers of this. Lack of essential healthcare facilities has led to an alarming number of child deaths. As per World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Organization (UNO) estimates, about 980 million children had to go without toilets and defecate in the open in the years 1990-2004, and it seems figures will only increase in the coming years if any sincere effort is not taken towards curbing the trend. This would lead to escalating health problems, and ultimately the occurrence of deadly diseases like diarrhoea that claims the lives of about 28 percent of children under five every year.

Child mortality rates are an important indicator of a country’s growth and development. It’s very much evident that countries which have achieved an advanced level of progress and development have undertaken health and sanitation considerations very seriously in terms of policy making and its implementation. There is a need to allocate part of an economy’s resources to sectors like health and sanitation in order to combat the vicious rate of child mortality in developing countries. Underdeveloped and developing countries tend to lack sufficient resources for sectors like health and sanitation, leaving them unable to sufficiently invest in health plans and medication.

The Zambian Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS) reveals appalling data regarding child mortality. It says 119 out of 1000 children do not reach five years of age in Zambia, diarrhoea being the main cause of deaths with one-fifth of children falling prey to this deadly disease. Sanitation is a major cause of worry in Zambia but there are few serious efforts to prevent the crisis. The survey states that hardly 60 percent of children suffering from diarrhoea get any sort of medical assistance, as the government’s funds are too insufficient to cover the magnitude of the problem. However, some policies like the Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP) 2006-2011 can prove to be a great help in diminishing the severity of the situation.

Mere rhetoric will not solve the sanitation problem, action is needed to resolve it. There are some simple guidelines which, when adopted in earnest, will give encouraging results. Equipping schools with toilets, especially for girls is a vital step towards improving the sanitation problem. There must be proper disposal of human and animal waste to prevent the spread of fatal diseases. Basic hygiene practices such as the use of soap and water in schools and public places can prevent the transmission of diseases like cholera, which cause diarrhoea. Organisations at national and international levels should create awareness among people about healthcare and sanitation issues. The participation of more and more people will arouse mass awareness against poor sanitation and the consequent life-threatening situations created thereupon.

The International Year of Sanitation 2008 was an effort towards meeting the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the number of people who live without proper sanitation by 2015. The UK has exemplified that proper channelling of funds towards improving sanitation can control (and reduce) child mortality rates. A lack of political will in the ruling establishments in many nations is a major reason behind the present dreadful conditions of sanitation and healthcare facilities. An investment in sanitation can control child mortality rates to a great extent, such as can be seen through the examples of countries like Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

There is a great need for investment in the health sectors of developing countries (and specifically in sanitation and water), if child mortality is to be reduced. More funds need to be diverted towards eliminating the root of problem (here sanitation) instead of taking efforts to tackle the after-effects. Only then will child mortality be significantly reduced, giving children the prospect of a brighter future.

About the author: By profession, Amanda Kidd is a writer and blogger who believes that a healthy lifestyle is must for a happy life. She always makes it a point to write health articles like on various diseases every now and then. But recently she is busy in writing on different types of anger management therapies and exercises.

Tickets are £5 each, and can be bought from the Big Give here.

Upon entry, the Big Give will give each visitor a £5 gift voucher to give to a charity of your choice on theBigGive.org.uk – please choose Wherever the Need!

Date: Sunday 21st August 2011
Time: 2pm – 5pm

Find out more here.

The foundation is to significantly expand its sanitation programme with a $42m grant scheme to spur innovation in this area and a greater emphasis on encouraging behaviour change in communities.

An estimated 2.6 billion people do not have access to safe sanitation and more than 1 billion people are understood to defecate in the open.

In a speech to the AfricaSan 3 conference in Rwanda on Tuesday, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation’s global development programme, said: “No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by the invention of the toilet. But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches, new ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet.”

The foundation, in partnership with governments, universities, the US development agency, USAid, and the African Development Bank, wants to encourage the development of relevant tools and technologies that will improve basic sanitation, such as waterless toilets that do not rely on sewer connections and hygienic ways to empty pits and process and recycle waste. New ideas must cost no more than $0.05 per person per day and be easy to install, use and maintain. They must also be ideas that are relevant to specific communities and are what people in poor countries want…”

Read the full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jul/19/gates-foundation-expands-sanitation-programme

That’s the kind of information that Sridevi Govindaraj, an Indian agriculture expert, had in mind when she proposed that dousing fields with urine could improve sanitation and boost farmers’ incomes.

“Human urine is indeed not an unwanted waste, but it is a useful resource,” Sridevi wrote to E4C.

Urine, it turns out, is a huge and mostly untapped reserve of crop fertilizer. If Indians collected and applied 40 percent of their urine, the country could save $26.7 million (1.2 billion rupees) in fertilizer costs, Sridevi calculates.

A unique field
Those figures are from her doctoral thesis at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore in 2009, with research funded by the Arghym foundation. Sridevi may be the only person in India with a doctorate in ecological sanitation.

The urine proposal
She proposes using urine in conjunction with regular fertilizers. People would collect it in specially rigged toilets, like EcoSan latrines. Or, in lieu of a commercial product, DIY attachments to toilets in the men’s room are cheap and easy to make.

The experiment
Sridevi tested urine on maize, bananas, radishes, tomatoes, millet and French beans, all with encouraging results. In nearly all cases, urine outperformed chemical fertilizers, she says.

“Now many farmers adopted our technology and implemented it in their own field,” Sridevi says.

More tips and fun facts
Application to the fields works best with a diluted mixture of five parts water to one part urine. A drip irrigation system can help avoid health hazards. And Sridevi suggests using airtight containers to store the urine and gloves to transport and apply it.

Urine is packed with the nutrients plants need. In 22 gallons (100 liters), there are more than 10oz (300gm) of nitrogen, 6oz (170gm) of phosphorous, and 5.6oz (160gm) of potassium. Plus, it has almost every other essential and secondary nutrient that plants can use, Sridevi says.

“Human urine can be effectively used in agriculture for food production will lessen our dependency on commercial fertilizer,” Sridevi says.”

Rob Goodier, E4C, May 22, 2011

Source: https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/2011/05/22/urine_is_fertilizing_crops_and_saving_money_in_india.html