MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
FIG donates £ 3,000 for drinking water in Bangladesh.
The Falkland Islands government made a donation of £3,000 to the charity Wateraid that works for the improvement of contaminated drinking water sources and poor sanitation levels in poor countries. The donation is specifically for Bangladesh one of the world's most crowded countries.
"Although we are a small United Kingdom Overseas Territory with a population of under 2,500 people, we recognise our more privileged financial position and try to help other, less fortunate countries and communities," comments Councillor Richard Cockwell, one of the eight Falkland Islands Legislative Councillors who approved the sum.
The cheque was presented to WaterAid Project Funding Manager Essi Lindstedt by Suky Cameron, FIGO representative in London.
Over the last twelve months, Falkland Islands Government (FIG) has helped nearly thirty charities, associations and institutions with donations of more than £100,000 (US$139,000), WaterAid works in fifteen countries in Africa and Asia and is the UK's only major charity dedicated exclusively to the provision of safe domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education to the world's poorest people.
In Bangladesh, WaterAid is involved in a number of urban and rural projects and hygiene promotion programmes using a variety of participatory approaches. Key achievements to date include:
? Helping 90,000 people living in 170 slums in Dhaka and Chittagong. ? Development of participatory hygiene promotion methods, which have won wide acclaim. ? Successfully ?importing' gravity-fed technology into the Chittagong Hill Tracts from Nepal. ? Developing low cost arsenic testing kits ? the natural occurrence of arsenic in ground-water is a major problem in many parts of Bangladesh. The charity seeks to use the good practice it has developed to influence national policy and actively seeks to maintain regular contact with other key organisations in the sector. "We are delighted to have received this support," comments Essi Lindstedt, Project Funding Manager, WaterAid. "Such generous contributions help us continue to make a difference not only to lives today, but also to future generations." Two of the Islands' eight elected Councillors, Cllrs. Richard Cockwell and Roger Edwards, plan to meet WaterAid representatives in Bangladesh and visit a project when they attend Commonwealth Parliamentary Association's Small Countries Conference and General Assembly commencing October 3rd, 2003.
FIGO - London
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