Picture of Water Filter

If you would like to see a photo of the water filter, please visit Tina's website: www.AidTanzania.com and look on the donations page.  You can make a donation there to purchase a filter as well.

26 Water Filters

Great news! Tina & Wantay have picked up 25 more water filters from the factory in Arusha.  One was already being tested at the boma. Our Cups for Water project purchased 23 filters and 2 others have been donated as well. This is a wonderful first step.  Tina has been in contact with Safe Water Now, headquartered in Atlanta, GA, and is learning about how to monitor the filter's use and how to evaluate (M&E) the health benefits for the people using them.

At the present time, Tina & Wantay are working with the community elders on how best to place the filters.  There are 900 people in this community and the filters will be fairly distributed. With further M&E information, we hope to learn the value of the filters and if positive, will continue our efforts to purchase more until their needs are met. 

Safe Water Now has communicated a project for supplying filters to orphanages in Africa.  It is my hope that this project continues to grow so that we may help provide filters there as well.

THANK YOU

I wish to thank everyone who has donated their time, money and handcrafted cups to this project.
I am overwhelmed by the generous response we have received.
I especially wish to thank Pam Herring, Sue Schmidt and Sharon Speedy and her daughters for running the Cups for Water project in Breckenridge this summer. They worked hard to raise alot of money and gave out much information for the project.
Thank you to the members of the Summit County Clay Artists for their generous donations of cups.
I also wish to thank the high school students and the Girl Scouts who participated in making cups and generating sales.
And a huge thank you to all who have purchased our cups and made donations to this project.
A special thank you as well, to the Vail Farmer's Market & Art Show for allowing me to present this project in my booth.
Donna

Summer Markets Over - Time to Blog

Hello clay friends. 
This summer found me extra busy taking on the Aspen Saturday Market in addition to the Vail Farmer's Market & Art Show.  So I do appologize for not updating this blog.  Thank you all for checking in on our project's progress.
Here's our great news!  We have raised $1059 for the purchase of water filters.  That comes out to approximately 30 filters.
Tina & Wantay are still in Tanzania and putting a program in place to distribute the filters among the Maasai villagers.
I am including an excerpt from her latest email here:

Tina:
We were all day yesterday fetching water for the boma as they have been out of water for 3 weeks as the storage tank developed a crack and the NCAA was slow to repair it.  I told Wantay that I’d like to go see the water filter in use and he responded “Do you think there is water in it?”  Duh, not when there’s been no water at the village tap for 3 weeks. But, my mother-in-law was still happy with the way it performed.  Yea!
   All the money you guys have so generously raised will go to purchasing as many filters as possible, to the cost of transporting them from the Arusha factory to Ngorongoro and to purchasing packaging materials, if needed.  Wantay and I do not take any salary and we are in fact terrible about even reimbursing our out-of-pocket expenses, so most of the time we end up paying for things like gas, accommodation etc. while doing Aid Tanzania stuff.  Please have some patience with us as things are not as simple as in the US.  For instance, because we’ve been in the Conservation area for 4 days on 4x4 roads, we’ll need to take the car to the mechanic to have him look it over and tighten things up before going to Arusha to pick up the filters. We’ll have to have the seats removed from the car (it’s a 1994 Land Rover) which is about an hour long process to have someone crawl under the car and unbolt the seats from the chasis…So we will want to be 100% certain that the factory has all the filters produced, tested, and packaged before we make the 3 & ½ hour drive to pick them up, return home and then drive the 1.5-2 hours into the Conservation area to distribute them.  We’ll also want to have someone from Safe Water come and conduct the training to the 30+ recipients.  So, it may take us a little while to coordinate everyone’s schedule.  Did I ever send you the photos from our visit to the “factory”?  It’s not a factory as we would think of it with automated processes or even multiple people working on a “line”, but rather it seems that one fellow is producing the filters.  They are gaining in popularity as three other of our friends are purchasing filters as gifts for locals they know.
We had hoped to get a plan in place while we were there this week for distributing the filters but the water situation was so dire that we had to use our car to take as many buckets as we could to town to purchase water for people (again out of our own pockets).  The people are REALLY suffering right now as it is the dry season and the cows have no milk so the people really have no nourishment. 

Tina's note kinda puts things in perspective.

Respectfully submitted,

Donna

Cups for Water Clay Fest

Summit County Clay Artists are holding a Clay Fest, June 16 & 17,
11:00-5:00, in the Breckenridge Arts District, at the Quandary Cabin
Clay Studio. This event is part of the Town of Breckenridge "Kingdom
Days." Members will be demonstrating throwing clay on the potters wheel
and other clay techniques throughout the day.  Adults and children may
have a short throwing lesson for a $5 donation to the Arts District.
There will be a large display of professional and student cups available for
donations to the "Cups for Water" project.  Donations to the project purchase
ceramic water filters for the Maasai tribes people in Tanzania.  The donations
from just two cups will buy one family a water filter which will last
for years.

All cup forms made during the event will be finished by the Summit County Clay Artists
and donated to the project.
We welcome all cup donations from our ceramic friends from around the country to help
stock this event.You may drop off or send your cup donations to the Arts Alive Gallery in
Breckenridge.  Please see the post on shipping donations.

We thank you all for your support and interest in this project.

Summit County Clay Artists - April Meeting

The Summit County Clay Artists met at Amie's, Sunday, April 22, 2012. She hosted a wonderful brunch at her pretty "mountain cabin" up in the blue river area, south of Breckenridge. Eight artists were present: Amie D., Pam H., Kristina N., Sue S., Grace K., Kathrine R., Sharon S., and me, Donna C. Pam & I shared our photos from the NCECA Conference.  It was a great opportunity to discuss and critique a wide variety of ceramic artwork with fellow potters.

Then we got to work on our "Cups for Water" events that are coming up in May with school children and the summer events with the Town of Breckenridge. More info will be published shortly about the 5th grader's project to raise money for water filters. The next cup sale for "Cups for Water" will be held at the Summit County High School, Friday, May 18. There will be at least 80 cups available for your selection with a donation of $20. We will be sending a check to Safe Water Now at the end of May with our collected procceeds to date. The generous members of our clay group also pitched in to help pay for the postcards we had printed for the project and distributed at NCECA. Thank you, ladies. Your caring and devotion to this project is overwhelming.

Our next group meeting will be at Kristina's home, also in blue river, on May 27, at 10:30.  Anyone interested in joining us, please contact Pam Herring or me.  pam@herringdesigns.com & djscausland@wildblue.net

News from Tanzania

I just received emails from Tina at Aid Tanzania and  Leslie at Safe Water Now.
They are both thrilled with our project. Good news, they have met and Tina &
Wantay visited the factory and learned how to prime and use the filters.  We have
our first filter in place. Tina & Wantay are using it now so that they can teach how to use
and take care of them. We have a sales event at the local high school coming up in May.
So we plan to send our first draft of funds at the end of May. I hope we can purchase 10
filters.
Thank you all for your interest and help,
Donna

Shipping donated cups

Here's a note from Pam Herring that explains the shipping for the donated cups.

SHIPPING NOTE:  We greatly appreciate any cups donated to the "Cups for
Water" project.  Donna and I, (project directors for "Cups for Water")
live in the Rocky Mountains.  They do not deliver US Mail to homes in
our county.  There is just too much snow. We have Post Office boxes or
receive delivery by Fed Ex or UPS.

The Arts Alive! Gallery in Breckenridge (our local artist co-op gallery)
will be receiving mailed cups delivered by Fed Ex or UPS. The gallery
is not organizing or participating other than to receive donated cups shipped
to their address.  We will collect all donated cups from the gallery.

Thanking you in advance,
  Pam Herring

How the project began

Having been a member of NCECA since the 70's, I have been exposed to projects like Potters for Peace (please visit their website) and the ceramic water filter factories. I met Ron Rivera at the Portland conference in 2006 and Manny Hernandez at the one in Phoenix in 2009. Manny spent some time telling me about his work.(google him and ceramic water filters and you will be amazed) He left me wondering what I could do to help.  In the summer of 2010, I had a Farmer's Market booth in Minturn, Colorado, next to the Aid Tanzania non-profit booth. I got to know Tina and her family and the reasons for their work.  I asked her if she knew about ceramic water filters and if they would help.  Well, of course they would. So I sent her the information and found out that Manny had started a factory in Arusha, Tanzania, which is about a 3 hours' drive for them. The scope of Tina's project is huge and funding is limited, so I asked my clay friends (we call ourselves the Summit County Clay Artists) if they would like to make cups to sell to raise money to purchase the filters for Aid Tanzania. Wonderful women that they are, they took the ball and ran with it. We've decided to make it an ongoing project. The local girl scouts and the high school art students have made and donated cups as well. We are currently collating our progress and will keep an ongoing update of the cups and monies raised along the side of this blog.

Cups for Water at NCECA

Pam Herring and I attended NCECA (The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) in Seattle, WA, March 27 - 31. 2012. We took along 1000 postcards explaining our project and asking for cup donations from the ceramic artists in attendance. We were both genuinely overwhelmed by the positive response from everyone we talked with.  So many potters, organizations, and educators said they would send a cup or create an event for the project. Thank you does not express our gratitude.  It was truly an amazing experience and we look forward to receiving those donations.

Cups for Water

The Summit County Clay Artists of Colorado are raising money to purchase ceramic water filters for the Maasai tribes people of the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area in Tanzania, Africa.  The filters are made in Arusha,Tanzania by Safe Water Now.  Please visit http://www.safewaternow.org/ to learn more.  The filters will be distributed by Aid Tanzania, a non-profit organization started by Wantay &Tina Irmakesen that promotes women's vocational training and sponsors education for the children.  Please visit http://www.aidtanzania.com/ to appreciate the needs and challenges of the Maasai.

Our clay group makes and collects cups from our clay friends.  Summer 2012, we will hold three clay events in coordination with the Town of Breckenridge Arts District. (more information coming) At these events, donated cups will be given as a Thank You Gift to anyone donating $20 to the Maasai cause.  All monies, 100%, is sent directly to the factory to purchase filters.  All materials, advertising, sales and fund-raising efforts are donated by our clay friends.  We are grateful for any cup donations for this worthy cause.

Cup donations may be sent by Fed Ex or UPS to:
Arts Alive! Gallery
Cups for Water Project
500 S. Main Street, Suite 2B
Breckenridge, Colorado 80434-0738
Phone: 970-453-0450
Please include your contact information and email address.

or contact:
Donna Causland:  djscausland@wildblue.net
Pam Herring:  pam@herringdesigns.com