Project Details

On 7th September 2004, Hurricane Ivan brought catastrophe to many countries in the Caribbean, but the trail of destruction was most visible in Grenada. So far, only 170 of 10,000 destroyed homes have been rebuilt and there is lingering damage, poverty and environmental decay.
Many children are now being taught in classrooms topped by blue tarpaulins. Huge piles of discarded zinc roof tiles sit outside the wrecked national stadium, where the once-vibrant nutmeg fields lay. The disaster reduced the number of nutmeg trees by 70%.

Today, only 70% of Grenada's population has access to fresh running water while the rest of the population gets dirty water from rivers, water catchments and lakes. In addition to the economic losses, 85% of the island was deforested. Deforestation can have serious consequences such as landslides, reduction of rainfall and most importantly, reduction of ground based water-cleaning capacity. The hurricane winds and tornados caused defoliation of bushes and trees, the breakage of stumps and the death of many long-growing rain forest trees.

First-hand report from Charles W. Daniel

I left the UK at the end of May, generously supported by The Caribbean Tourist Authority in London who arranged for my Virgin flights to be sponsored by Virgin. On arrival in Grenada, I was surprised at how little had been achieved since Hurricane Ivan the previous September: there were still a great many damaged and roofless houses and the population was still full of a sort of apathy. I had arranged for support from The Windward Islands Research and Education Foundation and met my designated students who were responsible for monitoring the water quality of the village of Après Tout in Saint Patrick's.

We visited the site the following day and discovered that a dead dog had been found in the water catchment area. In fact this wasn't all that important as there were cattle grazing all around anyway and chemical fertilisers were getting into the water supply.

The village has approximately 300 souls and the children, in particular, are almost constantly sick with tummy complaints and other water-borne diseases. We had meetings with the villagers, the National Water and Sewage Company and the Ministry of Health, which started a process of collaboration that culminated in a new filtration plant and water storage tanks being installed. For the first time each dwelling will now be provided with its own tap from the water supply, all provided by the water company.

If by any chance this arrangement is found to be providing unacceptable water quality over the next year, the students will identify the problem quickly. Now we have spent time finding the actual water source, it may be accessed directly in future if necessary.

The problems were all very simple and were predictably mainly human; once we got all the relevant parties talking to each other they were really very easy to resolve. Thanks to the vision of Just a Drop, Après Tout now has a good, clean and healthy water supply.