Power of SUNY

Rockland Students are Purifying Drinking Water Around the World

Marvin Mathew, co-chair of the Water Justice Alliance and President of the RCC Student Government Association, puts packages of water purification systems and toys together for distribution in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

An alliance of RCC students, led by Marvin Mathew, Stan Morodokhin, and alumnus Mark Svensson, developed the Water Justice Alliance (WJA) in 2010 to help provide water purification services to communities around the world in need of clean drinking water.
 
Through the sale of awareness bracelets and other fund raising activities, the WJA has been able to purchase simple, effective water purification systems for communities in need. They are also working with international RCC alumni who have returned to communities which lack clean drinking water, like alumna Liliana Alcala who returned to her home in the Dominican Republic. There is an acute need for clean drinking water in Haiti since the catastrophic earthquake last January destroyed so much infrastructure, and the WJA is working closely with RCC alumna Sophia Francois in Port-au-Prince, to distribute water purification systems and other items needed for the community. 

According to United Nations statistics, there are 884 million people who do not have safe water to drink, and each year 1.5 million children, or one child every eight seconds, dies as a result.