Children gather at the water filter that serves their school in the Angkor region of Cambodia. It was the first filter installed as part of a project that aims to bring 7,500 of the devices to the area. (Photo courtesy Bob Aldrich)Wednesday, March 21, 2007
By Alex Kuffner
Journal Staff Writer
The Providence Journal (Rhode Island)
BRISTOL — When Bob Aldrich retired after 32 years at Raytheon Co., he didn’t have to worry about the cut of his beard anymore and could let his white hair grow long enough for a ponytail. Leaving the conservative work environment at the Portsmouth defense contractor gave him a chance, he quips, to finally indulge his Samson complex.
He also started something else in his retirement.
A year ago, Aldrich went to Cambodia for the first time to work on a project being financed by the Middletown Rotary Club that aims to bring clean water to thousands of villagers in the poverty-stricken Southeast Asian nation. He returned for two weeks this past February, and is planning another trip in a year.
Aldrich, a 66-year-old Bristol resident, is donating his time and money to a cause he knew little about a few years ago. Now, he’s hoping that others will give. He has a simple explanation why.
“Because it feels good to do it,” he says.
On Saturday, the Middletown Rotary Club will hold a dinner featuring Cambodian food, music and dancing to raise money for the two-year-old program.
The purpose of the dinner, at the Johnson & Wales Inn in Seekonk, is to raise up to $10,000 to purchase inexpensive and low-maintenance water filters for villages in the Angkor region of northern Cambodia and train local residents how to use them.
The roots of the project go back to the 1990s when a Japanese photographer visited Cambodia and decided he had to do something to help rural children whose families didn’t have access to modern medicine.
He raised money through Rotary International, and in 1999, opened the Angkor Hospital for Children, near the famous Angkor Wat temple complex. The Middletown club got involved by purchasing a used dental office and shipping it to the newly opened hospital.
That’s when Aldrich first learned about the health problems in Cambodia. He was still at Raytheon at the time, and the company helped the club send the dental office overseas.
Aldrich retired in 2004, the same year that Gunther Hausen, an engineer who’s also a Middletown Rotary Club member, started an initiative to complement the work of the children’s hospital. Aldrich soon got involved.
As he tells it, an overwhelming number of children in Cambodia fall sick because of dirty water.
“The rate that children die in Cambodia is one of the highest in the world,” he says. “Fourteen percent don’t reach five years old. A quarter of those die from waterborne diseases.”
The problem has been exacerbated in the Angkor region because of the increased development that tourist dollars have brought to the region. New hotels are being built, but the region’s main city lacks a proper sewer system, so groundwater supplies are being tainted by human waste.
The natural solution to the problem is to ensure that residents have access to clean water. Hausen found a concrete and sand filtration system that has been successfully used in other countries and decided to bring it to Cambodia.
Last year, Aldrich traveled to the Angkor region to help start the program. He describes it as an agricultural area, where people rely on cultivating rice for their livelihood.
“I wasn’t prepared for the level of poverty and the primitive nature of the villages,” he says. “It was more than I envisioned.”
He helped install some of the first 53 filters. Most serve private homes. One school has a filter and so do two healthcare centers.
The results so far have been encouraging. A $60 filter can provide clean water to 20 people.
Aldrich says the project is expanding exponentially. He expects 250 filters to be installed this year.
“We’ll put in 20 filters, and once we get started 20 more people will come out of the woodwork to ask for filters,” he says. “Once people see these things working, the demand grows.”
Although the expense of buying and installing each filter is relatively cheap, the overall program is large and costly. Aldrich says it will take an estimated $600,000 to reach the project goal of 7,500 filters, enough to provide clean water for up to 150,000 people.
So far, $110,000 has been raised, which will be spent this year. So the project needs donations to continue.
Aldrich believes it’s a valuable endeavor. He feels like he’s making a difference.
“After you work all your life, raise a family, and you’re all done, it’s not such a bad thing to do something for someone else,” says the married father of four.
The dinner at the Johnson & Wales Inn, 213 Taunton Ave., Seekonk, starts at 5 p.m. and wraps up at 8 p.m. The event is not just open to Rotary members. Anyone interested can buy a ticket. Tickets are $75 each and can be purchased at the door or reserved in advance. For more information, e-mail Bob Aldrich at bobbbeth@fullchannell.net, or contact Gunther Hausen at (401) 849-0309 or by e-mail at ghausen@cox.net.
“Once people see these things working, the demand grows.”
akuffner@projo.com
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