Rotary Life Straws Project

The Rotary Club of Grantham are engaged in a project to involve primary schools in Grantham and District in raising money to buy Life Straws for children in Africa and then to keep in touch with them so that they will learn more about children throughout the world. The Life Straw is a personal water purification device turning any water into drinking water.

More than one billion people – one sixth of the world’s population - are without access to safe water supply. At any given moment, about half of the world's poor are suffering from waterborne diseases, of which over 6,000 – mainly children – die each day by consuming unsafe drinking water. The world’s most prolific killer though is diarrhoeal disease caused by bacteria. Safe water interventions have vast potential to transform the lives of millions, especially in crucial areas such as poverty eradication, environmental improvement, quality of life, child development and gender equality. LifeStraw was developed as a practical response to the billions of people who are still without access to these basic human rights.

This LifeStraw was designed with special emphasize on avoiding any moving parts, as a sealed unit with no replaceable spare parts, and avoiding the use of electricity, which does not exist in many areas in the developing world. But as force (power) is required to implement the filtering, the natural source of sucking, something that even babies are able to perform was chosen.

LifeStraw is an invention that could become one of the greatest life-savers in history. It is a 25 cm long, 29 mm diameter, plastic pipe filter and costs just a few dollars. It is a personal, low-cost water purification tool with a life time of 700 litres – approximately one year of water consumption for one adult – two years for a child. Created ten years ago, the Lifestraw has emerged from work designed to make water filters capable of safeguarding against Guinea Worm. The final product of that work, the LifeStraw, can do much more than the original concept and positive test results have been achieved on tap, turbid & saline water against common waterborne bacteria such as Salmonella, Shigella, Enterococcus and Staphylococcus.

Below is a running total of money raised by our local schools towards this worthwhile project

R = Rotarian   F = Friend of Rotary