A few miles off the Caribbean coast of the country of Panama, just southeast of the Costa Rican border, lay the picturesque islands of Bocas del Toro. These palm-tree laden isles ringed with white sand beaches hold a dark secret. The archipelago is situated in a lush rain forested region where hundreds of inches of rain fall each year, yet many of its indigenous residents have no access to safe, potable water as they do not have the monetary means to catch and store it properly. Residents often access water from streams near their villages. However, people and animals upstream pollute it. By the time the water reaches consumers in low-lying areas, it is contaminated with human and animal waste. Also, the water collects in holes near schools and quickly becomes muddy and unusable.
During a vacation to the islands in the spring of 2008, retired American Joe Bass and his wife Maribel, a native of Costa Rica, came across a clinic run by a visiting medical worker from the US. The volunteer was busy treating a teenage boy who was afflicted with a dreadful skin disease. The boy was in agony and the medical worker could do little to help him.
Said the man, “See this boy? I treated him last year. I’m treating him now, and I’ll probably have to treat him again when I return next year. It’s all because of polluted drinking water. He has no alternative but to drink foul, disease-ridden water.”
“But can’t something be done to help these people?” asked Bass.
The medical worker replied, “If you want to do something, help them get safe water. They need that more than anything else.”
According to the U.N., eighty per cent of all illness in many developing countries is due to unsafe drinking water, and each year 1.6 million children die because of it. These heart-stopping statistics are why Bass and his wife Maribel transplanted themselves to these remote islands and founded the philanthropic organization Operation Safe Drinking Water (OSDW).
Thriving on a commitment to live among the people they are helping and working to bring those overwhelming U.N. statistics down, the couple began to build the charity from the ground up by soliciting pro bono legal, accounting and other professional services. OSDW is a registered 501(c)(3) charity and has a vibrant website that is continually updated with information regarding their ongoing work. The charity’s primary focus is to set up simple rain-catchment systems that are replenished with safe water every time it rains. They’re simple, low-maintenance and have only one moving part — the faucet. The couple began by launching a boat-based first-aid initiative throughout the islands.
“It was heartbreaking to see so many innocent lives being lost because something as basic as clean drinking water was not available,” says Maribel.
