Community Water Solutions
Bringing Clean Water to Communities in Need
Our Work
Community Water Solutions was founded in 2008 by Kate Clopeck, Vanessa Green, Chuck Howe and Mike Brown. To date, CWS has implemented water treatment business in thirty-five villages in Northern Region, Ghana. These businesses provide a reliable source of safe drinking water for approximately 20,000 people.
Like many regions of West Africa, Northern Ghana remains unable to provide improved water access to the majority of its 1.8 million people. Many rural women must walk further than 15 minutes from their homes 4-6 times per day to collect drinking water from surface water sources called dugouts. These sources are shared with animals and are both highly turbid (many suspended particles) and contaminated with fecal coli form. Such contamination creates numerous risks for public health, particularly high incidence of diarrheal disease in children under 5 which is the third leading cause of death world-wide and is responsible for 1/4 of the stunted growth of the surviving children in the developing world.
In each village, we trained members of the community to collect, treat, and sell water from their local water source. We designed, manufactured and distributed safe storage containers to each household in these villages.
The CWS water businesses are now consistently selling water and the women are earning enough money to not only sustain the businesses, but also to provide a small income to the men and women who work there. In fact, the woman who runs the Kasaligu center has used her income to pay for her two youngest, son and daughter, to attend primary school. These children are the first in her family to attend school!
Our four Ghanaian staff members, Peter, Shak, TJ, and Wahab visit each village weekly to monitor the business and assess the demand for water as the seasons change. Visit our monitoring website to stay updated on our progress in these communities.