Marshall Islands honored for ‘water for all’ accomplishment

MAJURO — The Marshall Islands was called to honor Saturday night for becoming only the second country in the world to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of “clean water for all.”

An all-volunteer women’s organization in the Marshall Islands was credited for spearheading a five-year project to provide simple water filtration systems for home use to every family in this watery nation of low-lying coral islands.

The Marshall Islands is the second, behind Liberia, to deliver on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal number six to provide clean water to every resident, said Darrel Larson, Director of Sawyer International, the maker of the portable filtration systems that partnered with the Kora In Okrane or KIO Club in support of the water project.

KIO Club hosted a dinner Saturday night in Majuro to celebrate completing the nationwide program of delivering the home water filtration systems to over 8,000 households in the Marshall Islands, as well as training islanders in their use and maintenance.

KIO Club President Angeline Heine-Reimers said the success of this five-year program was the partnership with multiple government ministries, other NGOs and the private sector. She said it was a difficult task given the logistics of ocean travel to remote and sparsely populated islands.

Learn more about this project, written by Giff Johnson here.