Well, James is at it again, except in 2012, he will be breaking the world record for FULL Ironman-distance races.  Each race is 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling, and a full marathon run.  James will be completing 30 of these events in under 52 weeks.  It’s never been done before, but we have faith!

Here at Quiet Way we chant “collaboration,” and we’re passionate about knowledge sharing. In answer to the question of who is working on the global water crisis, I wanted to paint a clearer picture of who the water responders are with this post, highlighting a few note-worthy water-focused organizations. My disclaimer is this: there are numerous organizations that include water and sanitation among their many high-impact projects, but I will solely cover international organizations with a singular focus on water.

Water For People

Water For People has an amazing video that embodies a lot of what Quiet Way represents, please watch it!

Water For People has also set up the Tap Portal, a social networking site for people interested in water issues to collaborate. This is interesting because Quiet Way will be launching our Water Forum soon, a similar initiative for collaboration. The Tap Portal is completely in line with what we’re advocating but there is a lack of discussion, so our goal is to get the sharing & discussion going! Check out their field level operations (flow) map too.

Charity:Water

Charity:Water helps individuals raise money for individual water projects (1,835 water projects thus far), allowing donors/volunteers to feel truly connected to the work. We recognize Charity:Water as the marketing guru of all water organizations. It’s important to get the message out about water, and Charity:Water does well with good-looking media, materials, and products to educate and emotionally connect with supporters . We especially want you to watch their “Why Water?” video.

Water.org

Water.org focuses on community-level water supply projects, and it has a range of praiseworthy programs, such as WaterCredit. Also, check out their map using data from the Joint Monitoring Program of WHO and UNICEF. Water.org seems to do their homework on every country they go to (See their info on water in Kenya), and they share what they know.

WaterAid

WaterAid was established in ’81 so they’ve been around longer than most. Check out the components of their work, such as how they have independent evaluations of programs, community lead sanitation projects, hygiene education, and partnerships with other big aid organizations.

ColumbiaWater

The Columbia Water Center at Columbia University wants to tackle water scarcity on all levels. Their mission states their desire to “design reliable, sustainable models of water management and development that can be implemented on local, regional and global levels.” Using rigorous research to influence policy is great, and we support their holistic approach. The institute offers a seminar series, college courses/internships, and a plethora of research articles to search through. The blog is informative and updated constantly. Rock on. To go beyond this blog post on water orgs, ColumbiaWater has posted a list of links to other water organizations right herr.

There are many more organizations of note to check out:

Thirst Relief International: Bio-sand filters used to clean water sources
Global Water Research Coalition: Many institutes/orgs working together. That’s what we like.
International Water Association: Global network for water professionals.
The Water Project: Funds wells and other water projects
Water for the Ages:A blog on water that also lists links to other organizations.
Water Dialogues: Dialogues on water and the private sector
Freshwater Action Network (FAN)

Although not established solely for water, some of the big boys here (UN, WHO) make a greater impact within their water programs than the smaller water-focused nonprofits.

These are some big boy examples to check out:

UNESCO International Hydrological Program
UNESCO Water Portal
UN Water
World Health Organization (WHO) Water Sanitation and Health
CARE

Feel free to leave comments with your opinion of these organizations or if you want to mention ones that weren’t mentioned here!

-Nicole Styler
Twitter: @nstyler9

Last summer, between my first and second year of BYU’s MPA program, I interned with Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). It was an exciting path from first learning about MCC to actually working at the headquarters in Washington, DC. I was first intrigued and impressed by MCC because it has a strict selection criteria for what countries it’ll work with. It seemed like a shining example of an agency founded on an intellectual experiment of investment with accountability (rather than aid with no accountability). In order to measure policy performance, MCC clearly outlines the partner selection criteria under three categories: (1) Ruling justly, (2) investing in people, (3) and encouraging economic freedom. A candidate country must, for example, demonstrate that it has a certain amount of control of corruption, health services for citizens, and good trade policy. Not only do potential candidates have to measure up, but once MCC starts working with partner countries, the development projects are subject to constant monitoring and evaluation to ensure that the outcomes are significantly greater than the input. Otherwise, what is the work good for? Intentions don’t get you to outcomes in the end. I interned in the Monitoring & Evaluation department and there I learned that you must constantly question which indicators best measure success for things like roads constructed, water access, business growth, or the amount of trade coming through a new port.

James continues to lead the Tri and Give a Dam! campaign to draw attention to Kenya’s water crisis and support Quiet Way’s sustainable dams and clean water initiatives.  Thank you James!

Click here to learn more about James, follow his journey through his blog, or stay tuned for 2011 udpates.

The Princess Festival is an annual event held in Utah – part of the net proceeds  are donated to Quiet Way. This year (2012) the Princess Festival will be held at Thanksgiving Point, in Lehi UT, on Jun 19-30.  Announcement of a Princess Festival in San Diego July 14-23 is forthcoming!

It’s hard to express the magic and power of this event. The Princess Festival is an interactive adventure for little girls ages 4-10 (ish), where the little girls actually get to meet, play with and learn to serve with adult Princesses and other characters. The event is designed not only to give girls an interactive experience with their favorite personalities from different fairy-tale stories, but also give them opportunities to practice service, kindness, optimism, self-respect and courage.

This will be the Princess Festival’s 5th year in running. Each year the Festival donates a sizable amount of the net proceeds to Quiet Way, so that those who have attended the event have not only practiced service and goodwill in play – their admission fees are making a difference in the lives of others.

More information about the Princess Festival can be found at www.princessfestival.com. You can also watch fun new introduction video recently released:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P9ZdkVZT8s. It’s mission is very impressive:  http://www.princessfestival.com/fun-stuff/blog/ and you can follow them on Facebook at:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/princessfestival

Hi, my name is Michael Gray. I am the newly hired Director of Operations at Quiet Way. I am a collaborative person, passionate social entrepreneur, and experienced base of the socio-economic pyramid (BoP) consultant (a.k.a. social innovation advocate for people in poverty). I am thrilled to be involved with Quiet Way because it is an organization that gets IT! What’s IT? Well, IT is the realization that much of traditional development and “handouts” don’t eradicate poverty. Quiet Way has been there. Although it’s made great impact on the lives of those it has served since 2002 (i.e. feeding thousands of people in Kenya’s drought zones), it has mostly been short-term. Recognizing that hunger in those regions will remain a problem year after year, it was apparent during my job interview that Quiet Way realized the need to focus on the root of poverty, and it cared about scaling and sustainable impact.

I am involved with Quiet Way because of its passionate team, innovate and well-researched ideas, and ability to mobilize the best resources and people to reach its goals. Figuring out its niche based on its knowledge and experience with water projects and its established network in Kenya, Quiet Way peaked my interest. Together, I know we will turn the water-resource management problems into opportunities to provide access to clean water for all Kenyans. While a lot of money has already been or will be allocated for water in Kenya, now it’s only a matter of strategically employing and directing its use in transparent ways to the best implementing organizations and partnerships.

Coming with a strong knowledge in cross-sector partnership development, impact evaluation, and economic development consulting experience, I am excited to join and build Quiet Way’s team. So far my main tasks have been to put Quiet Way’s evolved vision and strategy to accomplish its goals on paper, online, and in motion. Please join us as we bring Quiet Way’s ideas to implementation and continue expanding our coalition and building our team!

Also feel free to follow me on twitter: @michaelngray

Michael and I have committed ourselves to getting this website completely updated this week, which in my opinion is very exciting. I stayed up all night teaching myself how to use Photoshop, and have been working on images to help increase the site’s visual appeal and the digestibility of information.

We’ve spent the last two months with the rest of our team getting our plan completely outlined, and into writing, as well as working back and forth with the Board. It’s been a great month – I can’t express what a benefit Michael is the the organization. He should be posting an introduction within the next day or so.

So check back with us over the next few days to see our progress, and forgive the current lapses of content!

–Holly Sue Hatfield
Executive Director

My daughter Holly, our Director, has this trip so well organized. It’s all going like clock work.

We’ve been meeting with the scholarship students, interviewing and photographing them (we still need several more sponsors to assist us here). We think we now have our two big containers ready to be freed from the shipping port with food, clothes, school supplies from Scera and Liberty Elementary schools, medical supplies and school uniforms from Forbes Elementary. We have met with many senior government officials and developed expanded rapport. Also met with other dam building charities, contractors, engineers, women’s group leaders, leaders in Nairobi, and everything is very meaningful and builds on the last step taken to get us to our most ambitious initiatives.

Tomorrow we are going to a national park called Nakuru to see the flamingos and rhinos and other exotic animals in the wild…. but also to interview more of our scholarship students…. and cement the relationship with a new friend of the Charity, Nancy.

The former Kenyan Ambassador, Peter Ogego is arranging a dinner with the Church Humanitarian missionary couple and we’re trying to get a minute to met the new Mission President here, who is a good friend of one of my high school classmates (John Toronto). We’ll be visiting the new Orphan Feeding and Community Center in Asembo which we have made significant contributions to and have been the primary sponsor. The Church will be providing the food there for the next year.

Everything we are doing here is delivering a bountiful harvest of good. It is blessing and enriching the lives, of men, women and mostly children.

We will be inspecting the two new dams in Kibewzi, one built by the Amazing Students at Brighton High School and the other by those great people at Young Living. The sites of the next 20 dams are also being reviewed, photographed, and discussed with the local officials. The Goal is still 1,000 dams over the next 10 years.

Our new alliances with other dam building charities is making this more and more realistic. We now need to get our prelimiinary game plan going with the World Bank, USAID, Simplot, and others to start the granting process for the entire consortium we are building with these other operating entities. We have excellent experts from the World Bank and USAID to assist us.

This is an effort by all of you and us. It’s so fun to be involved with such good friends and fellow supporters of building a better world and ending severe poverty.

VIP trip in November. If you’re interested please contact me.

Holding back the Lions…..
–
Ron Hatfield
Ron@QuietWay.org

This is Holly Sue writing you from Kenya. Ron Hatfield and I arrived here at the beginning of this week, and I will be remaining until the 22nd of August (Ron goes home August 9). I can honestly say I’ve never been so “successfully busy” in my life; meaning, I’ve never eeked so much out of a day.

Before arriving in Kenya we visited the United Kingdom for a day, in hopes of meeting with other charities that have a focus of ending water poverty in Kenya. We met with two VERY impressive organizations: Excellent Development (www.excellentdevelopment.com) and the Kajiado District Development Trust (www.kajiado-district-dev-trust.org.uk). We had SO MUCH FUN meeting with these groups and learning from them about their dam-building initiatives. We also presented to them our strategy for the Give a Dam program: to get all charities with a water focus in Kenya working in collaboration with one another, with the Kenyan public services departments, the Kenyan Government, and bilateral/mutlilateral organizations (like the World Bank). I’ll be visiting the worksites of both of these organizations over the next few weeks and sincerely look forward to a long, successful friendship with them.

Ron and I have spent the past 3 days in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, making as many appointments as possible, with a variety of people. We have met with Minister of Parliament (similar to our Senators) Phillip Kaloki, who spent a whole afternoon with Ron arranging for our two shipping containers to pass duty-free through Kenyan customs. I met with the Mamanadada charity (www.mamanadada.org). We met with an engineering organization to discuss our dam projects (Nyana Hills engineering), with the East Africa Association of Grantmakers (www.eaag.org), the Vice President of Kenya’s charity – the Kalonzo Musyoka Foundation, two scholarship recipients, and many more friends of our organization …

Today we took a day off to visit the Nakuru Lake park, famous for the thousands of flamingos that feed on the lake’s shore. It rained on us

All-in-all, we’re beginning to move forward with the necessary contacts, alliances and necessary documentation to end water poverty in Kenya forever. It’s a very exciting thing. This country is teeming with progress. (On August 4 they vote for a referendum to their constitution that will further the level of democratic process). It’s an amazing time to be here. Napenda waKenya sana. WaKenya ni watu wa kupendeza!!!

I’ll keep you posted. I’m a little nervous about being away for a whole month, but feel relieved at the ubiquitous availability of wi-fi, and at the amount of progress we’ve made in such little time already.

Thanks for supporting us, and if you haven’t done so yet, check out www.triandgiveadam.com – there are lots of ways to help, and James is setting a wonderful example of making his passion pay out for the greater good.

Asante sana!
Holly Sue Hatfield
Executive Director
In Our Own Quiet Way