In 2008 a cooperation was started with the Friends of Lombok Kekeran foundation. This small foundation fights for longer and lasting improved healthier life of the inhabitants of the village Orong Kekeran.
The first usertest with the water purifiers from India showed that the villagers are enthusiastic about the product. Boiling water is no longer necessary after all. Therefore a decision was taken to work with some supervision of Water4Life to set up a small scale production for water purifiers of the gravity type.
In June 2008 the first locally producted purifier was presented. Some improvements are necessary before the purifier can be used but these first results are encouraging. It is expected that in the course of 2009 the first series of water purifiers will be manufactured.
Progress report by VLOK foundation – December 2008
Together with the authorities (Head of social department of Lombok, Mr. Rusny) the proposals of Water4life foundation have been discussed. Alex Vrinzen, chairman of this foundation from Limburg, promotes the water purifiers worldwide. The speciality of the water purifiers is that it removes 99.9% of various bacteria from the water in an easy manner. A couple of days before my departure back to the Netherlands we investigated whether there is knowledge and capacity to produce stainless steel vessels on Lombok. It appeared that about 50 craftsmen in the area of Mataran are capable to produce the vessels by hand. This resulted in me taking a brand new stainless steel water purifier back to the Netherlands.
The quality must be improved but the capacity is there!
In the village Orong Kekeran we distributed the first water purifier at the family of Herman Rusni. Regularly the 4 small children of the family fell ill. One of the causes is the low quality of the drinking water. In the weeks that we stayed in the village and the purifier was in use, no more cases of illness occured within the family.
Water purificiation in these villages is a must do.