Since the Healing Waters International water project opened at the Comunidad Cristiana El Santuario Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Church in 2006, church members have had more opportunities to decide on matters that can benefit the ministry and the community of Barrio Mexico in southern coastal town of San Pedro de Macorís in Dominican Republic.

The church’s leadership calls for periodic members’ meetings where all ministry managers update the assembly on their ministry. Since all the ministries overlap in some way, these reports help the church make the best decisions.

The ministries include Compassion’s Child Sponsorship Program, the Healing Waters International water project, a school and a community holistic vocational center.

These church meetings have become a forum at which the community, represented by the believers, can discuss the best ways to manage resources.

Milqueya is a mother of eight and grandma of seven. She and her husband still live with 11 children and grandchildren at home. Milqueya and her large family enjoy the benefits of the decisions she’s been helping her church make as a voting member. One important decision was the incorporation of the Healing Waters International water project.

In the past, even the least harmful water source wasn’t safe enough for Milqueya. She bought water from the trucks that drove past her home.

Miqueya paid only RD$20 for a 5-gallon water bottle, avoiding the RD$35 price at local stores. But the truck-bought water was making her and her family sick.

“The water caused us stomach diseases. But after we began to drink the water from the church, we are always healthy and we don’t have any stomach problems.”

After the Healing Waters International project began, the community’s health has improved. (more…)

Today is World Water Day. This year’s theme is “Shared Water – Shared Opportunities.”

Nurturing the opportunities for cooperation in transboundary water management can help build mutual respect, understanding and trust among countries and promote peace, security and sustainable economic growth.

Previous World Water Day themes included:

• Sanitation (2008)
• Coping With Water Scarcity (2007)
• Water and Culture (2006)
• Water for Life (2005)
• Waters and Disasters (2004)

Learn more about past World Water Days.

Be a voice for Healing Waters International.

Join a skeptical young couple from Denver, Colo., as they visit a Healing Waters International church partner in Guatemala to learn how the Healing Waters ministry model works.

Take a trip with Healing Waters.

Today’s post is written by Dan Brown, Chief Marketing Officer for Healing Waters International.

And for World Water Day 2009, we, Healing Waters, are celebrating our role in helping resolve this crisis by giving away free water at each of the water purification systems we’ve built with our local ministry partners. This event happens to coincide with a major ministry milestone for us – distributing 75 million gallons of safe drinking water to poor communities in developing countries.

Sustainability along with personal and community transformation are key components of our operational model. Over 110,000 people in poor, urban slums receive their daily drinking water from churches we partner with.

The churches have put nearly $500,000 back into their neighborhoods with community service funds and donated more than 3 million gallons to local schools. Every $50 donated to Healing Waters since we began seven years ago has provided life-giving water to another person.

While it took us 18 months to distribute our first million gallons of water and three years to deliver 10 million, we’re now distributing water at a rate of more than 1.6 million gallons a month.

With the addition of nine new systems this year, of which at least three will be at Compassion-assisted child development centers, we expect to deliver more than 2 million gallons per month by year end. (We currently operate 67 systems in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Mexico, 18 of which are at Compassion centers.)

“We are humbled to play a role in closing the gap on the world water crisis. We have become experts in our area of providing for the poor, urban communities of the developing world; but there is still so many more in need.” –  Ed Anderson, CEO of Healing Waters International.

Go to www.healingwatersintl.org to learn more, sign up for their newsletter and donate.

The problem of contaminated drinking water is a serious one. 3.4 million people, mostly children, die from water-related diseases each year — that’s the equivalent of thirty-eight 777s crashing every day and killing everyone on board. — UNICEF/WHO, Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000

There are many organizations in this world building clean water delivery systems in rural areas of the developing world, but the need for safe drinking water in more developed communities gets overlooked.

Communities may have water infrastructures in place, but the water that is distributed is contaminated. Purified bottle water is available in local stores, but not everyone can afford the “luxury” of clean water. Healing Waters International, one of our business partners, is changing that.

Healing Waters International builds water purification systems at local churches in the developing world, and trains the church staff to operate the systems and manage the accounting. The churches then sell the water in their communities, typically for less than a quarter of the cost of store-bought water, and then sponsor community service projects with the revenue that remains.

Healings Waters International Mission Statement

To see safe water provided in the name of Jesus in every poor community of the world, Healing Waters International empowers local ministry partners to bring physical, social and spiritual transformation to poor communities by providing sustainable, safe water solutions.

What a remarkable mission!

Kind of sounds like ours, doesn’t it?

Join the Healing Waters International cause on Facebook.