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MBM Charity Partner - Just a Drop

“ We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

Winston Churchill

At MBM Travel Executives we are committed to making a difference to people’s lives. It’s a quality that we celebrate in others, too. That’s why we have decided to lend our ongoing support to Just a Drop. For every placement we make, we will make a donation which we hope will make a big impact over time. Just a Drop is just another reason why working with MBM can be such a rewarding experience. Give us a call and together we can start making a difference today.

Imagine sending a child out to walk four miles before school, to fetch water in a jerry can that weighs nearly 20kg when full. Picture her standing ankle deep in a stagnant pond, scooping up and then drinking the muddy water. Then consider that this water is guaranteed to make her sick with a life-threatening illness such as dysentery, diarrhoea or cholera.

This is the harsh reality for many families in some parts of the world. Consequently, a child dies every 20 seconds from a water related disease.

Just a Drop is an international water aid charity with a very simple plan: to give people clean water. It was founded in 1998 by Fiona Jeffery OBE when she learned that just £1 could provide water to a child for 10 years. The main premise was that if people can be encouraged to give a little then collectively we can make a huge difference. The charity: 

  • Provides clean water and sanitation facilities to some of the poorest communities around the world through the construction of wells, boreholes, pipelines, hand pumps and latrines 
  • Encourages the establishment of health, hygiene and sanitation training programmes
  • Operates with a handful of full-time staff and an army of volunteers, many of whom are retired military officers and water engineers with experience on global water development projects
  • To date, has carried out over 130 projects across 31 countries, reaching an estimated 1.5 million people from Afghanistan to Zambia.

Our work is based on a sustainable model we call the "HEHE Principles", HEHE being the Tanzanian three legged stool, reflecting our three areas of focus and expertise. The seat of the stool represents the local community involvement which provides the long term cohesion to creating a sustainable model.

Achievements 

Last year Just a Drop has supported 40 projects in nine countries on three continents. In Africa we worked in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia; in Latin America our projects were in Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti and Mexico; and in Asia we are supporting two projects in India. We constructed 17 boreholes, 47 hand dug wells, 5 sand dams, 1 Charco dam, 214 latrines, 1 rock catchment guttering system, 44 water jars, 27 water tanks, rehabilitated 2 gravity flow water systems and repaired 1 wind generator. These projects have reached an estimated 133,000 people this year. 

The charity has been able to achieve this breadth of work by collaborating with other organisations and local NGOs. However, whatever the partnership, our remit remains constant: to work with communities at a grass roots level, to use/train local labour and crucially, to ensure sustainability.

Staff 

Just a Drop employs four full-time staff and one part time, but relies significantly on a dedicated team of volunteers who provide a diverse range of skills. 

Through our Honorary President Colonel John Blashford Snell, or 'JBS', many of our infield Project Officers are current serving or former military servicemen with logistical and engineering experience in conducting  site surveys, appointing local workforces and overseeing the project to completion. Many are not averse to travelling to far-flung destinations and have been known to travel by light aircraft, canoe, or horseback to drag equipment and building materials through jungle and other inhospitable terrain in order to reach communities desperate for clean water.

Water Facts

  • Over 768 million people in the world do not have access to clean, safe water
  • Around 2.5 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation
  • 443 million school days are lost each year due to water-related illness 
  • More people in the world own mobile phones than have access to a toilet 
  • The average distance a woman or child walks to collect water is 6km
  • Diseases attributable to dirty water and poor sanitation currently result in the deaths of more children globally that AIDS, malaria and measles combined

Film links 

Thank you

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