On a sunny Sunday of April 1st, 2017, the International Safe Water Project team (ISWP) went to Insadong Street in Seoul withourpictures. The ISWP members are high school students interested in international development by supporting people in developing countries. The ISWP’s 2017 mission is to support the clean water campaign for Cambodia, especially to people living in the arsenic-contaminated areas. Many people in the provinces along the Mekong River drink water directly from the river. For them to have safe drinking water, we are donating portable water purifiers, “Doong-Doong”. 
 
The “Art & Love Sharing” event by ISWP was held on 1st and 2nd of April in Insadong to introduce this problem to the Korean society. As president of the ISWP, I led the activity and shared my pictures during the street gallery event. Many people visited and asked about our project. All day long, we were standing on the street.  It was hard, but the event was meaningful for us and it was successful. In order to support this project, we have online and offline fund-raising efforts until we attain the amount of KRW2million. The online event can be accessed at https://fundrazr.com/01E4F4?ref=sh_66ZZIf. The ISWP plans to visit Cambodia and donate the “Dong-Dong” to the Ministry of Interior of the Kingdom of Cambodia.
 
The Kingdom of Cambodia is a beautiful country in a South Asian region adjacent to Vietnam. The meandering Mekong River, almost about 4,000 km, runs throughout the country and gives water and food to people in Cambodia. However, beyond its beauty is a tragic history of the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields. After the Cambodian Civil War in 1975, the communist ruling party conducted genocides from 1975 to 1979. As a result of these state-sponsored genocides, more than a million people were killed from a population of eight million at that time.  Cambodians lost their human resources to support their economy, and their social infrastructure including the water supply system.
   
Based on the data from the World Bank, Cambodia’s per capita GDP was about US$ 1,158.69 in 2015. Moreover, Cambodians who live in provinces are in a more impoverished state. The lack of economical means impacts on the drinking water supply system and sanitation. Many tribes along the Mekong River use the river as their source of drinking water without filtering out the contaminants. Drinking unpurified water from the river directly causes bodily diseases, and results to serious sanitation problems. The published article by Berg, M., Stengel, C., Trang, P. T. K., and et al. (2007) discusses the severe case of arsenic pollutionin the Mekong and Red River Deltas.  

At present, the ISWP supports people in those regions by donating “Doong-Doong”.  Using the “Doong-Doong” as their water purifier, people in those regions can secure their ingestion of clean water and protect themselves from getting diseases. The Ministry of Interior of the Kingdom of Cambodia actively supports to help find people who are in need.  And, the ISWP works with the Global Education Development Foundation (GEDF), a non-profit education foundation.  The goal of the ISWP is to continue to support these people until other big international organizations step in to build a water purifier plant and clean water reservoir system. 
 
Reference: 
Berg, M., Stengel, C., Trang, P. T. K., Viet, P. H., Sampson, M. L., Leng, M., ... & Fredericks, D. (2007). Magnitude of arsenic pollution in the Mekong and Red River Deltas—Cambodia and Vietnam. Science of the Total Environment, 372(2), 413-425.

 







Im, Dohyun
11th grade
Branksome Hall Asia
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