Rwanda Filter Project

Thirst Relief's ground partner in Rwanda operates through Frontier Harvest Ministries. The dedicated team provides water projects to the people of Rwanda with precision by targeting areas with the greatest … Read More »

Thirst Relief's ground partner in Rwanda operates through Frontier Harvest Ministries. The dedicated team provides water projects to the people of Rwanda with precision by targeting areas with the greatest needs.

Frontier Harvest has also converted from the concrete to the plastic Biosand filter which greatly helps with mobility and maintenance.

The installed cost of each filter is $70, with enough daily output of clean drinking water to meet the needs of 10-20 people.

Biosand Filter

The Biosand filter is an innovative version of the slow sand filter specifically designed for intermittent and/or household use. These filters are produced locally at the point of need using locally available materials and labor. The installed cost of each filter is $50-$90 depending upon location, with enough daily output of 99.9% pure drinking water to meet the needs of up to 20 people.

The Biosand filter is comprised of a concrete container (the approximate size of an office water cooler) with an inset plastic pipe, and filled with layers of sand and gravel. Contaminated water is poured into the top of the filter, where a diffuser plate distributes the water over the sand bed. The water travels through the sand bed, passes through multiple layers of gravel, and collects in the plastic pipe at the base of the filter. The clean water then exits the plastic piping for the user to collect.

The removal of waterborne pathogens and contaminants occurs in the Biosand filter due to a combination of biological degradation and mechanical filtration processes. The organic material present in the contaminated water is trapped at the surface of the sand bed, forming a biological layer, or "schmutzdecke", to actively remove the pathogens and contaminants. The water produced by the Biosand filter process is odorless, tasteless, clear in color, and safe for human consumption.
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Rwanda

Population	10,186,063
Per Capita GDP	$900
Life Expectancy	50 years
H2O Access	61%
Sanitation Access	43%

A country a little smaller than the state of Maryland, Rwanda is located in East Central Africa. Since the tragic genocide in 1994, the Republic of Rwanda has instituted constitutional reforms that mandate a balance of power between the two major ethnic groups. It is Africa's most densely populated country, and the majority of its population lives in rural areas doing subsistence agriculture. Its major exports are coffee and tea. Rwanda struggles with high poverty rates, but it continues to stabilize its economy. The small country mostly consists of grasslands and rolling hills which earn Rwanda its nickname, land of a thousand hills.