Bottle Buddies, Panama, OneBigBoost, Cholera, safe Water

Our bathtub is full. Just what you wanted to know. But ours is filled with water bottles! That's what you do when you have 200 beautiful, stainless steel water bottles ready to visit friends! Today FedEx delivered boxes full of the coolest bottles. Literally. And all had to be washed with hot water and dish soap, so the tub was scrubbed and in went the bottles! Made life a lot easier.
Our OneBigBoost project has a spin-off and I'll start with that. It is called Buddy Bottle, B`ot Zanmie and Botella del Compinche. All on the front. Buddy Bottles are an effort to find you a Bottle Buddy. No, not sat the street corner bar. That's a drinking buddy, although this is much the same.
Cholera is on the rise again in Haiti, as expected. Except this time it is at the end of the southern peninsula, in the mountains south of Pestel (near Jeremie). It is spreading fast and we received an email and call from Dr. John Carroll, who was there, battling the diseased and leaving the deceased. But the big agencies, UN etc, claimed there was no cholera there. Whatever.
OneBigBoost immediately decided to spend a big chunk of our cache, and used $6000 to purchase 330 highly effective water filters that serve HOUSEHOLDS rather than community wells. Reason: if a well becomes contaminated again, everyone can be affected or infected. this way, during such an urgent situation, it is limited to a household. We did what we were advised. But we're small, and we cannot provide for 250 000 people in the region. We do try.

Our follow-up is a filter that provides safe water (clean is great, safe is essential) for a classroom. Its output is 300 gallon+ each day. But that us not all.
The safe drinking water needs to be available as often as possible.
Here comes the BUDDY BOTTLE, a project where everyone wins.
You buy a beautiful water bottle.
For the low cost one is given to a person in a remote region such as coastal Panama or the Haitian mountains. He or she is now your BOTTLE BUDDY. (a "Buddy" is a friend, in American English). Safe water to take home from school or to your home.
And: $2 from each buddy purchase goes toward another classroom filter!

Each buddy purchase is only $15.
Two stainless steel bottles: one with our logo and a great graphic design at the bottom and a screw-on top, the other with our neat logo and a double, bright orange 2-piece top, for drinking and for filling (and ice cubes!)
The third one, which will arrive tomorrow, is bright dark blue translucent plastic (everything BPA FREE!) with a flip top and straw. They're SO nice!
A bottle for you, a bottle for your buddy overseas, and $2 toward a $48 filter.
If you look at the sporting goods stores, you will see the same one for quite a higher price: every penny for this goes to the project. 100%. As always. We don't need to make a profit.
Gifts, birthdays, kid playing soccer, you on walks, neighbor on bike rides..think of the possibilities!
Email at onebigboost@gmail.com and we'll hop to it.
Yes: during Panama we'll take messages too. Well...I have friends, you know!
We'll add Panama pictures, including kids with bottles, soon!

Marianne Kuiper Milks