We are extremely happy and proud to announce that we have been awarded the Energy Globe Award for provide clean and safe drinking water to thousands of people in the inland of Suriname.
The inland of Suriname has 37,000 inhabitants who do not have access to improved drinking water sources. Since women are responsible for fetching water, large gender inequalities exist with about 50% of the women being analphabetic.
BOSAQ is therefore implementing a drinking water project in Suriname in which five different villages with around 3,000 people will be provided with clean drinking water, based entirely on renewable energy by using Q-DROP, our state-of-the-art decentralized drinking water unit. The availability of drinking water will stimulate micro-development and will allow for year-round education.
Suriname has a total of 576,000 inhabitants, with 13% living in the remote inland, mostly in the Sipaliwini district. Since 93% of Suriname is covered with rainforest, these regions are difficult to access, often only by boat or small airplanes. The locals live in communities around the shores of the rivers and do not have access to clean drinking water; they drink either directly from the river or from the creeks in the jungle close to the village. Due to mining activities, the river water is contaminated with microbes and chemicals. During the dry seasons, the creeks dry out and people are forced to drink directly from the river or women are sent to fetch water deeper in the jungle. In these periods, teachers from the cities do not come down to the inland to teach, with a serious education backlog as a result for the children of the communities.
In comes BOSAQ, with it’s mission: to provide the world with clean drinking water in a sustainable and socially responsible way. The fact that this project ensures drinking water to 3,000 people (in execution) in a very remote region where currently no solution is available and no infrastructure (e.g., electricity) is present, is a big motivation for the entire team to go the extra mile to make it successful. Furthermore, this project will support education and women’s empowerment. 10% of our profit goes to the self-managed NGO ‘Water Heroes’ which donates installations to projects that have an established social framework but not the budget to provide a drinking water production unit.
River water is purified using the innovative Q-Drop technology that provides a reliable all-in-one solution for a fully automatic purification and distribution of the clean drinking water at very low costs. Due to the low costs, micro development is stimulated and local committees can set up water vending points. The water purification units can rely entirely on solar power which is important in an area without access to reliable electricity. Since a lot of time can be saved when women don’t have to fetch water every day, they have more time for education. Finally, awareness is created among locals about the importance of healthy drinking water and timely and accurate maintenance of the water units.
