Dhaka team receives 2 awards!

Congratulations to our Dhaka / Engineers for a Sustainable World  project team (http://stanforddhakawater.wordpress.com/#), who were awarded a first place win and a $20k prize this evening in the Social Entrepreneurship Challenge sponsored by BASES (Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students)! 

This recognition comes on the heels of the team being recommended for an EPA P3 grant for their work earlier this month.

The team has been working very hard over the past two quarters to develop an in-line chlorinator appropriate for low-income urban neighborhoods that rely on shared water points for their drinking water supply. This summer they will field test their prototype in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh, in collaboration with the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research. Their technology has the potential to benefit not only the 10 million slum dwellers of Dhaka, but the half a billion urban residents worldwide whose piped networks deliver water rendered unsafe by biological contamination. 

Congratulations to team Dhaka on a terrific job!!

Keegan Cooke

Kara Bennett

Valerie Bauza

Yoshika Crider

Nabil Mansouri

Isaac Madan

Olivia Vagelos

Camil Diaz

Dr. Amy Pickering (mentor)

Eng. Suprio Das (collaborator)

Delhi has its own "Great Stink"

Roughly 150 years ago, the House of Commons in London's Parliament had to be evacuated because of the foul odors emanating from the River Thames on whose banks the houses of Parliament were built. Subsequent fallout from this "Great Stink," as it came to be known, as well as from recurrent cholera epidemics, eventually resulted in the construction of the London sewer system.

Today the BBC is reporting that India's upper house of parliament was similarly evacuated, also because of poor management of human wastes. Although not nearly as dramatic as the London case, perhaps this experience will spur lawmakers in India to take a hard look at the fact that half of the country's population lacks access to even the most basic form of sanitation!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-18024831