Nonprofit with local roots has global reach
Oxnard group, which has helped drought- and disease-stricken countries, raises awareness of World Water Day
By Paul Sisolak 03/18/2010
For more than 30 years, Ted Kuepper had worked for the U.S. Navy as an environmental engineer designing advanced water safety equipment. So when Kuepper, an Oxnard resident, retired from the military three years ago, it only seemed natural that when he got the offer to extend his engineering expertise into the nonprofit sector, he took it.
For Kuepper, like the subject of his work, it was simply a matter of going with the flow.
“Someone contacted me in the Navy,” Kuepper said, and asked if he knew of any organizations in need of water-well drilling equipment. “So I started contacting nonprofits. One of the organizations I contacted was Global Water. One thing just led to another.
“It’s one of those things that started with a phone call.”
Global Water, at the time, was a Virginia-based nonprofit started in 1982 that raised funds and did outreach for Third World and developing countries, drought-stricken, in urgent need of safe drinking water supplies. When Kuepper entered the picture, he had started writing for the group, quickly becoming director of its West Coast branch. Its offices in Oxnard are now its national headquarters, and Kuepper leads the all-volunteer nonprofit.
Because Global Water has its origins with the United Nations, it’s only fitting that Kuepper’s group is working to raise awareness of World Water Day on Monday, March 22.
In its 18th year in 2010, World Water Day was started by the U.N.’s General Assembly in response to countries lacking adequate water resources. The goal, according to Kuepper, is that many regions of the world need financial aid because drinking water is unsafe, antiquated plumbing is the norm, and disease and massive dehydration are all but ignored by governing bodies.
“Mostly, we’re making permanent, new water supplies for rural villages,” he said. “We’re focusing on rural villages because, historically, those are the areas that have been ignored the most.”
Kuepper said the reasons are clear why places like Africa, Guatemala or Nicaragua are denied something as essential as water.
“The leaders of the developing countries themselves are not sufficiently interested in providing water to their own population. They’re interested more in the wealth of the developing country,” he said. “There’s always a reason why things are the way they are.”
Coupled with the lack of international aid from many other countries, the job of Kuepper and his team is to raise as much money as they can from what the nonprofit realm refers to as NGOs: non-governmental organizations, companies and donors willing to help.
Historically, the Oxnard group collects about $60,000 a year, he said. A typical well-building construction at a South American school may cost between $1,000 and $5,000, Kuepper said. A village project, $20,000 to $25,000.
What’s perhaps more remarkable about the nonprofit’s ability to consistently find funding is its quickly translating that money into a completed project. There was the Masiguito Project, a gravity-flow water distribution system for a rural town in Nicaragua; the repair of water-well hand pumps in Togo, Africa, the only ones of their kind for miles in the region; installation of a well at a Romanian orphanage; and provision of drilling equipment in Laos.
Kuepper takes his hands-on approach to Global Water’s caseload by visiting sites when projects are near complete. The impoverished conditions he witnesses are a far cry from Ventura County.
“I tell people when I go to a developing country that I see people living as they were 10,000 years ago,” he said.
According to Kuepper, contaminated drinking water is so prevalent in other countries that if children live past the age of 5, they’re considered effectively adapted to it. Eighty percent of childhood disease, he added, is attributed to drinking infected, polluted water. It seemed only fitting that this year’s theme for World Water Day is “Clean Water for a Healthy World.”
The overarching benefit of World Water Day, said Kuepper, is to shed light on larger problems that can’t be solved by one small organization alone. An international outreach effort to obtain groundwater from the most remote regions of Africa could solve that country’s drought problems, for example.
“It’s amazing there are huge aquifers under drought-prone areas, but you may need to drill 600 feet,” he said. “The cost to do that is significant, and there’s not a lot of international aid focusing on drilling for water wells.”
The dedication to humanitarianism runs in the family for Kuepper, whose daughter, Kathleen, is the assistant program manager for the nonprofit.
“We’re both science-oriented and interested in water,” she said. “I’m very proud of him and the work he’s been involved with. I’m lucky and proud to share that work.”
According to the Global Water Web site, several projects are in the planning stages for the Oxnard group, including installation of latrines, rain catchment systems and hand pumping stations in Kenya, Tanzania and other parts of Africa and Central America. To learn more or to donate, visit globalwater.org or e-mail info@globalwater.org.
To learn more about World Water Day, log on to worldwaterday2010.info.
For Kuepper, like the subject of his work, it was simply a matter of going with the flow.
“Someone contacted me in the Navy,” Kuepper said, and asked if he knew of any organizations in need of water-well drilling equipment. “So I started contacting nonprofits. One of the organizations I contacted was Global Water. One thing just led to another.
“It’s one of those things that started with a phone call.”
Global Water, at the time, was a Virginia-based nonprofit started in 1982 that raised funds and did outreach for Third World and developing countries, drought-stricken, in urgent need of safe drinking water supplies. When Kuepper entered the picture, he had started writing for the group, quickly becoming director of its West Coast branch. Its offices in Oxnard are now its national headquarters, and Kuepper leads the all-volunteer nonprofit.
Because Global Water has its origins with the United Nations, it’s only fitting that Kuepper’s group is working to raise awareness of World Water Day on Monday, March 22.
In its 18th year in 2010, World Water Day was started by the U.N.’s General Assembly in response to countries lacking adequate water resources. The goal, according to Kuepper, is that many regions of the world need financial aid because drinking water is unsafe, antiquated plumbing is the norm, and disease and massive dehydration are all but ignored by governing bodies.
“Mostly, we’re making permanent, new water supplies for rural villages,” he said. “We’re focusing on rural villages because, historically, those are the areas that have been ignored the most.”
Kuepper said the reasons are clear why places like Africa, Guatemala or Nicaragua are denied something as essential as water.
“The leaders of the developing countries themselves are not sufficiently interested in providing water to their own population. They’re interested more in the wealth of the developing country,” he said. “There’s always a reason why things are the way they are.”
Coupled with the lack of international aid from many other countries, the job of Kuepper and his team is to raise as much money as they can from what the nonprofit realm refers to as NGOs: non-governmental organizations, companies and donors willing to help.
Historically, the Oxnard group collects about $60,000 a year, he said. A typical well-building construction at a South American school may cost between $1,000 and $5,000, Kuepper said. A village project, $20,000 to $25,000.
What’s perhaps more remarkable about the nonprofit’s ability to consistently find funding is its quickly translating that money into a completed project. There was the Masiguito Project, a gravity-flow water distribution system for a rural town in Nicaragua; the repair of water-well hand pumps in Togo, Africa, the only ones of their kind for miles in the region; installation of a well at a Romanian orphanage; and provision of drilling equipment in Laos.
Kuepper takes his hands-on approach to Global Water’s caseload by visiting sites when projects are near complete. The impoverished conditions he witnesses are a far cry from Ventura County.
“I tell people when I go to a developing country that I see people living as they were 10,000 years ago,” he said.
According to Kuepper, contaminated drinking water is so prevalent in other countries that if children live past the age of 5, they’re considered effectively adapted to it. Eighty percent of childhood disease, he added, is attributed to drinking infected, polluted water. It seemed only fitting that this year’s theme for World Water Day is “Clean Water for a Healthy World.”
The overarching benefit of World Water Day, said Kuepper, is to shed light on larger problems that can’t be solved by one small organization alone. An international outreach effort to obtain groundwater from the most remote regions of Africa could solve that country’s drought problems, for example.
“It’s amazing there are huge aquifers under drought-prone areas, but you may need to drill 600 feet,” he said. “The cost to do that is significant, and there’s not a lot of international aid focusing on drilling for water wells.”
The dedication to humanitarianism runs in the family for Kuepper, whose daughter, Kathleen, is the assistant program manager for the nonprofit.
“We’re both science-oriented and interested in water,” she said. “I’m very proud of him and the work he’s been involved with. I’m lucky and proud to share that work.”
According to the Global Water Web site, several projects are in the planning stages for the Oxnard group, including installation of latrines, rain catchment systems and hand pumping stations in Kenya, Tanzania and other parts of Africa and Central America. To learn more or to donate, visit globalwater.org or e-mail info@globalwater.org.
To learn more about World Water Day, log on to worldwaterday2010.info.
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