Written by Paul Sullivan
Bridges of Saint Mark, a ministry of Saint Mark Catholic Church in Lancaster, Ohio, channels donations toward critical humanitarian, spiritual, and educational work for the poor in Southeast Asia’s Catholic missions. Projects have included upgrades or new construction of churches, classrooms, and dormitories for college students, support for volunteer doctors and medical supplies, food and education for parish community children, a concrete pad for farmers to dry their rice and partial funding for a new bridge at the Ca Lang parish.
Bridges of Saint Mark is currently working at the Trà ?ch Mission Church with their pastor Fr. Nguyen Khac Minh approximately 1 hour south of C?n Th?, Vietnam. Trà ?ch is a Catholic parish with currently one hundred families. Vietnam is a country of 95 million and according to WASH SDO (Skills Development Organization) 24 million do not have access to sanitary waste disposal. In the area of Trà ?ch, most people live along the Delta of the Mekong River, the 12th longest river in the world. The Mekong river is a primary resource for farmers and their livestock transport, swimming, bathing, fishing, laundry and, not to mention, the obvious most convenient place to relieve themselves; which has created a significant human waste pollution problem. Very few have access to the public water system, which is still not safe to drink. So, the primary source of clean water is bottled water, which must be purchased.
Randall Tipple and Paul Sullivan, parishioners of St. Mark parish, departed for Trà ?ch on January 14th; to coordinate the construction of 10 cement Biosand water filters and to facilitate the instruction of local parishioners in the construction and maintenance of these and many more filters. The ten filters would support the clean water needs of 20 families. The trainees would become the core instructors for future water filtration systems.
The resources for this effort were provided by Bridges of St. Mark to purchase the mold for the cement water filters and the tools, sand, cement, cement mixer and study materials, which are now the property of the Trà ?ch parish. Where there will always be the need for more education and the funds to support continued instruction, the future water filters should only require labor, sand, cement, tubing, a lid, a diffuser plate and two types of gravel. Bridges of St. Mark hopes to establish a funding stream to provide incentives and possibly wages to continue producing additional water filtration units.
The instructors and initial material came from WASH SDO, a Cambodian NGO. WASH stands for water, sanitation and hygiene. Their purpose is to educate people about the sources and dangers of water pollution as well as building filtration units.Bridges of St. Mark worked over the last few years to identify the best solution for water filtration for this situation and to coordinate the efforts of WASH SDO and the Trà ?ch parish.
