Value of Water

Now is the time to talk about the value of water. After all, water is the source of life, which sadly and all too often is in short supply. That is why safe drinking water is a key priority list of Rotary International. District 2232 Ukraine has its own, active WASH Committee, which works with an International WASH group formed at the beginning of the war to help Ukraine.

Clean Water in the Ukraine

Ukraine is a fertile country, with fresh water thanks to rivers and water supply systems. It is painful to write about water supply and drainage, sometimes damaged beyond repair, the destruction of lives of people, animals, birds and nature, of cities and small villages, and the occupation of our land, making it impossible for many to obtain safe drinking water in the usual way.

That is why, since the beginning of the war, Rotary Ukraine WASH has been a proactive part of the efforts in the frontline areas, helping to ensure widescale availability of safe drinking water, using various types of portable water filters and purification tablets. During two years, thanks to Rotary, Ukraine has received the equivalent in litres of clean water, based on the capacity of filters, tablets and powders, of in excess of 1.5 billion litres. Millions of Ukrainian citizens have benefitted from this, and many lives have been saved. Slightly larger solutions have been provided for small communities, kindergartens, schools, and medical facilities, using for example Grifaid Community filters, PAUL (portable aqua unit for lifesaving) filters and others helping to provide clean water to address the priority of the health of our children and sick people.

In June 2023, we faced a new ecological disaster; the destruction of the Kakhovka dam flooded cities and villages and created more contamination of the water supply, with previously buried waste rising to the surface. This called for even more urgent and focused assistance to the affected regions of Ukraine, because now simply distributing portable filters and tablets was not enough. Standard water supply became impossible in some cities and villages of the Mykolaiv, Kherson, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhia regions. We also started focusing on assistance in the form of stationary filtration equipment and mobile water purification units for more remote areas.

Thanks to grants from The Rotary Foundation Disaster Response Fund (later Ukraine Response Fund), we were able to install a stationary unit in Mykolaiv and deploy mobile filtration stations in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. These stations are now helping to provide approximately 12,000 litres of clean drinking water each day in badly affected areas.

As the war continues into its third year, the situation constantly worsens. The Rotary Ukraine WASH group constantly seeks funding and new solutions to help people with drinking water problems. A Global Grant will provide for another three mobile filtration units and another will supply drinking fountains for our children and adults in the bomb shelters of kindergartens, schools, universities, etc. These systems are plumbed into the fixed water supply and provide uninterrupted safe drinking water. Each unit costs around $1,350.

We are grateful daily to all our Rotarian friends, too many to name, who actively support our Country in this humanitarian crisis. Together we are a force for good in the world and together we will achieve Victory over evil.

D2232 Ukraine WASH
March 2024