• The Prem Rawat Foundation and Pakistani Rotary Club bring clean drinking water to 20,000 students
LOS ANGELES, CA, Oct. 29, 2008 -- The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) has made a contribution of $15,000 to the Rotary Club Lahore Mozang, which will add $5,000 in matching funds, to provide clean drinking water for 60 schools in the Punjab region of Pakistan serving approximately 20,000 elementary through high school students.
"An estimated 250,000 child deaths occur each year in Pakistan due to waterborne disease," according to USAID. "Waterborne infections such as cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery also burden the public health system and can impose significant economic losses."
The Rotary Club will purchase a water pump and cooler for each school and provide them to the Ghazali Education Trust (GET) for installation. The water system will become an ongoing community responsibility, expected to benefit students as well as their families and their communities by decreasing the spread of disease and improving educational opportunities.
Established in 1995, GET is a nonprofit government organization operating 270 schools in impoverished and rural areas of Pakistan, many of which have no access to piped water. Within four months, 60 schools will benefit from new water pumps with electric motors, purifying equipment and cooled storage tanks, essential in a country that has summer weather nine months of the year.
Rotary Club Lahore Mozang, a nonprofit organization, is an individual Rotary Club belonging to Rotary International.
The Prem Rawat Foundation was created in 2001 by Prem Rawat, known also as Maharaji, and has a dual mission of bringing his message of peace to people around the world and providing essential humanitarian aid to those in need. TPRF partners with other humanitarian organizations to bring food, water and rapid disaster relief where it is most needed.
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