Aquassistance Organization

The 2008 activity of the association kept being sustained with 68 missions, 122 volunteers sent and 1,318 days on sites.

At the end of 2008, we had a portfolio of 63 projects which benefited to 800,000 people all over the world. During last year we carried out 68 missions (each time an Aquassistance team is sent on site counts as a mission). Among them, two missions concerned emergency interventions, after an earthquake in the Chinese province of Sichuan and hurricanes at Gonaives in Haiti; the others concerned development aid.

The missions in the field of potable water were the majority (70%), followed by those regarding waste management (13%) and sanitation (5%). 12% of the missions encompassed several of these fields at the same time.

The number of members kept growing by 9 % in 2008 up to 840.

During their first site visit, the Aquassistance team were horrified to find hypodermic syringes, dialysis pouches and used medicine bottles on the dump where all the rubbish of Gabu (population 35 000) is tipped. This site was a borrow pit for a local civil engineering contractor, a pasture for cows and a playground for the local kids. We just had to do something about this state of affairs.

In the frame of the partnership between the French Red Cross and the “Fondation Suez Environnement–Eau pour tous”, Aquassistance provided emergency response water treatment equipment for the “Plateforme d’Intervention Régionale Océanie Pacifique Sud” (PIROPS), based in New Caledonia and trained Red Cross volunteers.