Posted by Amelia Anderson
Last Tuesday evening we had a very inspiring presentation from Sharon and Pete Crean from BeyondWater. They had only flown in from Kenya that morning, so it was great that they were able to present at our meeting.

They started BeyondWater in 2007 while they were living in Sydney. Faced with the fact that nearly one billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water and two billion don’t have any form of sanitation. They had a dream to give African children access to water, but it goes even further than that. Little did they know that five years later they would upend their lives - leaving their jobs, uprooting their family and move to a place they had only been to a couple of times. Eleven years later they are still living their dream in Kenya.

Liz Crean, Sharon Crean, Amelia Anderson,
President Teresa Liu and Pete Crean
 
The dream has become a reality - where they now work across several countries and each day around a quarter of a million (240,000) people have access to clean water and sanitation facilities through the work of BeyondWater. These include schools, medical clinics and remote communities.
 
Their detailed and very informative presentation on the many different projects they have been working on and the issues they have had to overcome to succeed, was captivating. Their philosophy is to empower the local people so that they can carry on the work and become self-sufficient.
About eighteen months ago we had a presentation from Sharon and Pete via zoom when we were all still in lockdown. Subsequently, our Club had made a donation to BeyondWater. As part of their presentation, they showed us photos of the toilet block that our donation had contributed to, which was nice to see.
 
It was a very dynamic and enthusiastic presentation which kept the attention of everyone in the room. It was very impressive to see the marvelous work they are doing to address the needs to people in Africa.