We are excited about our upcoming trip to the Sacred Valley,
which is located in the Cusco region of Peru. Check out the attached photo to get a better idea of where we are headed:
This trip will be our first to Peru, and it is taking place
at about the same time in which our Tulip filter Project in Nicaragua is
finishing up. In this trip, we will be travelling to the Sacred Valley along
with the Peru Health Outreach Program (PHOP), a student-led initiative from
Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and Case Western Reserve University
School of Medicine. PHOP has been
travelling to Peru since 2006 for four weeks every summer to set up a clinic in
the rural setting of the Sacred Valley, as well as working in a urban hospital
in Chincha Alta, Peru.
We are partnering with the PHOP initiative in order to add a sustainable, year-round water treatment component to their program. Both parties are extremely excited to add this aspect to the program, since it will allow for a more permanent impact on the health of the people of the Sacred Valley, other than just four weeks of primary health care.
It is important to understand that the philosophy of Pure Water Access Project is against blindly going into a country or region and delivering (or imposing) water filters on the people there, merely assuring them that they “need” such technologies. That is why we are going to do extensive research on the geography and lifestyle of the people of the Sacred Valley, in the hopes of selecting of a treatment system that will work most effectively and sustainably. If we do not feel assured that we have a sufficient technology, then we will use the first trip this summer in order to gather baseline data and to assess the situation in the Sacred Valley. Again, we are not doing this for the sake of doing this. We want to ensure that the projects we conduct, and the donations which you give, achieve sustainable impact on the populations which they serve. We will do our absolute best to ensure this process, and to document and analyze it all in order to disseminate that information and share it with the larger NGO sector.
Additionally, we are pleased to announce that the IRS has
recently recognized us as a legitimate charitable organization, and granted us
tax-exemption under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue code. We will be
adding the documentation of this status to our website, and issuing
documentation to all of you who have donated thus far. Our status is retroactive,
meaning all donations since our inception are tax-deductible. Thank you for supporting us thus far, we
continue to make significant strides and it is all thanks to you.
- Adam Tabbaa
