Amenawon Foundation Celebrates World Water Day

March 18, 2009 - PRLog -- World Water Day, launched by the United Nations in 1992, is held annually on March 22.  Its purpose is to focus attention on the billions of people around the world who still lack safe drinking water.  The first World Water Day occurred on March 22, 1993.

The Amenawon Foundation is celebrating World Water Day 2009 by emphasizing its efforts to help resolve this crisis. The Foundation is organizing “Free Water Day” and will supply free water to the residents in Uwessan, Edo State, Nigeria as well as promote awareness of water conservation and hygiene.

This event will also kick off the Amenawon Foundation’s Clean Water Initiative.  Through this initiative, the Foundation will raise funds to provide educational programs that promote awareness for water conservation, sanitation and hygiene, and construct boreholes to service other villages in Uwessan.  Local sustainability, along with personal and community transformation, is a key component of the Foundation’s operational model.

Uwessan is comprised of eight villages and approximately 25,000 people.  The free water will be drawn from the one consistent and certified source of clean water - a borehole that serves approximately 1,500 people - located in Udomi, one of the villages of Uwessan.  It is certified as an official source for water consumption by the Edo State Ministry of Environmental Health.

The borehole was constructed June 2004 by two local residents, Drs. Regina and Joseph Okoawo, retired teachers from the United States who returned to their local village to develop various educational, civic, and social projects to improve the economic conditions of Uwessan and the surrounding villages.

Free Water Day will be co-sponsored by the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School in Washington, DC, whose 5th grade class raised $1,250 towards the Foundation’s clean Water Initiative in 2008.

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Amenawon Foundation's mission is to improve the livelihoods of rural Nigerians by advancing infrastructure, educational resources, and health awareness in order to support economic development, empower communities and promote sustainability. (NGO 501c3)