Our Work

Water Interns Work Around World

Each year a group of interns disperses across the globe to build and install BioSand Water Filters and work with communities thirsty for safe drinking water. The interns live and work in communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and return to Canada with first-hand experience of the challenges of life in a developing country, and of the vital need for access to clean water.

“(The BioSand Water Filter is) such a simple technology, but something that profoundly affects people in so many ways,” says Karen Dyck, who worked in Kenya alongside fellow intern Eileen Liu from 2006 to 2007.

Every year, Samaritan’s Purse – Canada, with support from the Canadian International Development Agency, equips and sends young Canadians to developing countries to implement household water filter programs in communities with little or no access to safe drinking water.

Samaritan's Purse and our local partners have installed more than 70,000 filters in homes, communities, schools and clinics around the world during the past 10 years, and have plans to install another 65,000 of the $100 filters during the next three years.

Water and Healthy Communities

The interns, post-secondary graduates from across Canada, are equipped to work alongside local partners and staff to construct and install the simple BioSand Water Filters. After construction, they train local recipients in the use and maintenance of filters, so the technology will continue to provide an impoverished family with safe water for life. The interns also present HIV/AIDS education and community health and hygiene principles, helping families achieve a healthier, better quality of life.

Karen Dyck says often communities already know what they need to be healthier, and interns play a crucial role in helping implement long-term solutions by building relationships in communities. The filters also open doors to other Samaritan’s Purse projects.

“We get to effect change household by household,” says Dyck. “If you can bring clean water into a community, the effects are so far-reaching.”

Between 2006 and 2007, interns James Tan and David Bock helped initiate the first Samaritan’s Purse household water filter program in Malawi, a nation in southeastern Africa where poverty is widespread and cholera, a deadly water-borne disease, is endemic. Diarrheal diseases, spread through contaminated water and poor health practices, are a major cause of illness and death.

 “Water is really the first step,” said James Tan. “The BioSand water filters allow us to go into communities and begin relationships…And once they get this clean water, they are healthy, they can be productive, and they can help themselves.”

More About BioSand Water Filters

• Read more about the BioSand Water Filters.
• Learn about the great need for clean water globally.

Ways You Can Help
Pray Please pray that God will continue to provide direction to Samaritan’s Purse, as we respond to people’s needs, share the love of Christ, and serve the church worldwide.		Give The need is urgent. A child is dying every 20 seconds in the developing world from diarrhoeal diseases caused by polluted water. Donate Here.