Thursday, 23 October 2008

The Child Health Site Funds Clean Water System for Cambodian Hospital

Seattle, WA, October 22, 2008 --(PR.com)-- GreaterGood.org and The Child Health Site is pleased to announce the gift of $8,370 to the nonprofit A Child’s Right. This gift will be used to install one clean water system as well as construction for a clean water station at Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The installation is expected to provide clean water for approximately 10,000 children a year treated at the hospital and for their families, who camp near the hospital while their children are undergoing treatment.

The Angkor Hospital system will be installed in November. Eric Stowe, executive director of A Child’s Right, will be accompanied on this trip by volunteers including Brian Ebersole, former mayor of Tacoma, and George Flanigan, city inspector for the City of Gig Harbor.

As well as aiding in the installation of the water systems at Angkor Hospital, Stowe and his volunteers will travel to other sites in Cambodia, ranging from street shelters to orphanages, to install clean water systems. They will be in Cambodia from November 14 to November 24.

“The work that A Child’s Right performs is vitally important to the long-term health of children in need. We were impressed by the effectiveness and the efficiency of the system used by A Child’s Right and look forward to working with them in the future to fund more clean water projects,” said Lisa Halstead, president of GreaterGood.org.

More About A Child’s Right

Based in Tacoma, WA, the nonprofit A Child’s Right provides the very best in water purification systems to children living orphanages and street shelters, children’s hospitals, and schools. Under the direction of Eric Stowe, A Child’s Right has grown rapidly in the past 18 months to become the single largest provider of clean water during the 2008 China earthquake relief effort, serving approximately 50,000 children in the region.

By utilizing the same high-tech, low maintenance systems that provide clean water for Starbucks and McDonalds in China, Stowe has been able to address the most basic health need of children and drastically reduce the expenses of the organizations caring for those children. With a new water filtration system installed by A Child’s Right, the orphanages, shelters, schools, and hospitals no longer need to import expensive bottled water to protect the health of the children in their care.

“Our standards are simple,” explained Stowe. “If the water is not clean enough to give to our own children, we won’t give it to any child.” The filtration system used by A Child’s Right eliminates virtually all bacteria, viruses, pathogens, and cysts from the water. Upon the installation of a system, Stowe and his volunteers always celebrate by taking the first drink of clean water on site.

Once installed, the water systems provided by A Child’s Right need only 5 to 10 minutes of maintenance a year. In-country staff check on every site every three months for the first two years and every six months the following years to ensure the system’s integrity and the quality of water.

“What is amazing about the new technology is how quickly we can set these up,” said Stowe. “We used to dig up water and sewage lines and be filthy for days. But now, we can install a system in under six hours.”

The systems are paid for and maintained through a combination of corporate and foundation grants as well as private donations. Volunteers of all ages from the United States have assisted Stowe and the nonprofit’s in-country staff in the installation of systems in Nepal, China, Ethiopia, Thailand and Cambodia, providing continual access to clean water for thousands of children.

A Child’s Right currently has agreements with the Chinese government to provide new clean water systems to 500 orphanages over the next five years. The goal, said Stowe, is “to provide clean water to every institutionalized orphan in China by 2013.”

More About The Child Health Site

Launched in October 2002, The Child Health Site focuses the power of the Internet on a specific need: saving children by funding basic but critical health services.

To fulfill its mission, The Child Health Site raises funds for charities through three important channels: the company’s innovative Click to Give™ program, direct donations through such site programs as Gifts That Give More™, and contributions paid for by items sold through The Child Health Site’s store.

The Click to Give™ program on the site’s homepage (www.thechildhealthsite.com) is paid for by advertisers and 100% of this ad revenue goes directly to support the work of the charities listed on the site. In 2007, visitor clicks funded basic but critical health services for more than half a million children in need around the world.

The totals of the 2008 Click to Give™ program are posted on The Child Health Site’s results page and are updated daily.

The Child Health Site is part of the GreaterGood Network of websites. To learn more, visit www.thechildhealthsite.com or www.greatergood.org.

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