LEONGATHA Rotary Club are helping to bring clean, safe drinking water to communities across Timor-Leste by raising money for the installation of SkyHydrants in much needed areas.
Through a variety of fundraising activates from movie nights to art shows and show and shines to their second hand furniture store, the Rotarians support both local and international projects.
The group have been funding the SkyHydrant project for a number of years, as it ticks a lot of boxes for the group when it comes to determining which charities they support.
“It’s a fantastic project for supporting people with a need. The clean water that they get from it is used in areas of need. It’s ongoing. It’s self-sustaining and the whole system is so simple that it’s maintained by locals. Once you put them in, set people up, it’s not a thing that we have to keep going back into. The communities where they go into, they take control and it really is life changing for them to have clean water on tap,” explained Jol Dutton, president of Leongatha Rotary Club (LRC).
“It’s a very good project, and it’s very simple technology as well.”
This year, LRC managed to raise enough funds to install a whole unit in Timor-Leste, which is now providing 1500 staff and students with safe drinking water – a critical improvement for their health
and wellbeing.
The SkyHydrant was installed at the Carlos Gamba Vocational Training Centre, which provides youth the opportunity to gain an education and skills for future employment and is in Fatumaca, about three hours east of Dili.
Some of these students have been trained to install SkyHydrants and the project was carried out in partnership with Disaster Aid Australia (DAA) and Rotary Projects Timor-Leste East (RPTLE).
SkyHydrants are purchased from the not-for-profit SkyJuice Foundation and are a robust, cost-effective water filtration system which removes 99 per cent of contaminants.
The system is capable of producing over 10,000 litres of water daily, meeting the needs of 500-1000 people and has a lifespan between five-10 years.
With the success of past SkyHydrant projects, Jol believes LRC will continue to support this one.
“It’s been installed in Timor-Leste this year already, but no doubt we’ll be funding again. I’m pretty sure we’ll be supporting it, because it’s very popular, and it’s very effective.”
Disaster Aid Australia, RPTLE and the local community have extended their thanks to the Rotary Club of Leongatha for its continued support and commitment to improving lives in Timor-Leste.