The Water Nun

Nun brings filters for clean water to world

She's a nun without a convent or a habit, but Sister Larraine Lauter is surely on a mission from God.

As the executive director — and only full-time employee — of Water with Blessings, she's a ferocious advocate for getting clean water into the hands of mothers and children in impoverished countries across the world.

Lately, the Ursuline sister of Mount Saint Joseph has been tapping the "nun network" and coordinating with pastors, medical missionaries, humanitarian aid groups — anybody headed to Nepal who's willing to stuff a suitcase with small water filters that save lives.

The two recent earthquakes in Nepal have killed more than 8,000 people and displaced many thousands more. Crumbling buildings and landslides have made it difficult to find clean drinking water. Sister Larraine wants to remedy that, one household, one family at a time.

So far, partners have hand-delivered more than 500 filters, which are about the size of an empty toilet paper roll and lighter than a cell phone. But she needs help to deliver more.

"Their faces will tell you what the filters mean," she said. "They are just full of joy because you can kill a child overnight with E. coli. And they know that."

In her small Middletown office filled with rosaries, crosses and pictures from partners in Uganda, Guatemala and Haiti, Sister Larraine works the phones while a handful of volunteers write thank-you notes, open mail and tally donations.

"How many suitcases can you take?" she asked a caller from a medical mission in Hattiesburg, Miss. She shipped 25 pounds of filters to a man in Minnesota. It's all he could fit in his suitcase. To anybody flying to Nepal she asks: "Can you at least take a few?"

Sister Larraine nudges the way nuns do, or as longtime friend the Rev. Jim Cobban, pastor of Middletown First Baptist Church puts it: "She wills it to be."

"She came and spoke one Sunday morning, and everybody held their breath while I drank Floyds Fork water," Cobban said of her filter demonstration. "And I haven't grown three horns yet. But the church is very excited about it. Folks have volunteered. They've donated."

The program's success, he said, is a testament to who Sister Larraine is.

"If I introduce somebody new to her it's like throwing fresh meat in a pool of piranhas," he explained. "She has them on her volunteer staff before that meeting is over."

The price of failure

But she also knows the price of failure. The developing world is littered with broken water solutions — literally. Busted pipes, stolen water lines, missing valves. She knows because a community-based water filtration system she helped install years ago in Honduras failed.

The gang-ridden, survival-based community had no reliable leadership so the $2,500 system lasted a week. Someone stole — or "liberated," as Sister Larraine prefers — the car battery that powered it. And the pipes were dug up within days.

There had to be a better way.

"So we asked ourselves: Who is the most reliable group, closest to the children who are at the household level?" she said. "If we can find something small to get in their hands we can do this. So we started talking about mothers."

That's how the model for Water with Blessings was born. Since incorporating in 2011, the organization has distributed 6,000 Sawyer PointOne filters to people desperate for clean water in 28 countries. By the end of the year Sister Larraine hopes it will be 10,000. In five years, the goal is to distribute 25,000 a year.

Using the same technology as kidney dialysis but on a much smaller scale, the plastic filters filled with hollow fibers are attached to a tube in a bucket. There's no power needed. Gravity does the work. Once the water drips through, it's clear of all the contaminants that cause dysentery, intestinal parasites, cholera, typhoid and many other illnesses that lead to death.

The filter is good for a million gallons of water. It can filter more than 450 gallons a day, and will last at least a decade. The filter and all of the training materials cost $60. And for a limited time, the manufacturer has reduced the filter's cost by half for those being sent to Nepal.

But every aid organization faces the same fundamental challenges: Will people accept the solution? Will it last?

That's where the Water with Blessings model is different. The organization targets "mothers and others," those who play the role of mom. No matter where the organization sends filters, mother culture is always the same, Sister Larraine said. Mothers share, and they don't say no to other people's kids.

"I always say God has put smart women everywhere," she said. "This is not gringo to the rescue. This is not that model. I am troubled by that model. And even if these women are barely literate they can still be amazing trainers."

Source: The Courier Journal

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Taxonomy

• Purification
• Filtration
• Water Supply