Global Resource Alliance

Reaching Out

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Welcome to Global Resource Alliance

GRA is an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to bringing hope, joy and abundance to the world's most impoverished regions. By sharing ideas, volunteers and financial resources with local, community based organizations we seek to promote natural, holistic and sustainable solutions to the challenges of poverty, malnutrition and disease. The inspiration and leadership for our work comes from the communities we serve. We believe that empowering local communities to address pressing social, economic and environmental challenges according to their own vision and their own creative potential is the key to lasting solutions.

Together, with thousands of like-minded groups around the planet, we are committed to building a better world - one based on "respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice and a culture of peace" as expressed in the words of the Earth Charter.

We believe that by utilizing the abundant resources available to all human beings - the mind's unlimited creativity, the heart's unbounded capacity for love and the abundant forces of life that flow through all the kingdoms of nature - such a world is possible....

News from the Field

Solar Cooking

March 02, 2009

For several years, we have been searching for a sustainable method of cooking food and boiling water for the families in the Lake Victoria region. Using wood or charcoal for stoves is unsustainable for both the local economy and the environment. Often families need to spend a big part of their monthly income buying fuel.

When fuel is not available, everybody in the family has to drink untreated water full of germs with serious consequences to their health. Some must resort to eating uncooked cassava – a staple food in the area, which is very hard to digest and often makes them sick.

The environment is suffering enormously from all the trees that are cut for fuel, to the point that the Tanzanian government has deemed it illegal to cut trees and sell wood and charcoal without a permit. The deforestation is so great that the governement is not even issuing permits at this time.Yet many people continue cutting trees (legally and illegally) as a way to generate some income, leaving a barren environment.

At GRA, we have explored alternative sources of fuel for cooking, mainly biogas, jatropha oil and efficient wood stoves. Each one of these presents challenges of being either complicated, expensive or difficult to implement.

During our trip to Musoma, Tanzania in October 2008, we learned of some people in town using Solar Cooking with good results. We met brother Sergio, from the Catholic Dioceses, and he was very excited about this approach. We decided to partner and organize a workshop in Musoma.

We contacted Solar Cookers International’s East Africa Office, and they responded very positively to our suggestion to come and teach the local community. In a couple of weeks we were able to organize the first Solar Cookers class with more than 30 participants who were selected among the top leaders and enthusiasts in their communities.

Solar cooking is very simple and inexpensive. It requires sun and time, two commodities abundant in the Tropics. During the training we learned how to solar cook almost any kind of food, as well as how to “pasteurize” water, which involves bringing the water to a temperature that kills germs and makes it safe to drink. We also learned how to build our own solar cooking kits. Everyone built a solar cooker and was able to purchase it at a subsidized price, and start cooking at home.

In January 2009, GRA and Solar Cookers International (SCI) co-sponsored, in collaboration with SCI East Africa and brother Sergio, a training for trainers that lasted 5 days and expanded our knowledge on the subject. We learned other skills like how to test the quality of water with simple testing kits, and how to make fireless cookers (or hay baskets) that can keep the food warm for many hours after solar cooked, or even complete the cooking process once started in the solar cookers.

Again we had about 30 participants, many of them repeaters. Everybody got their certification and is ready to start teaching others in their communities. Some of them have started to do so, and solar cooking is becoming more popular in the area.

At GRA, we decided to do our part in promoting solar cooking in Musoma and it’s surrounding villages, and have been purchasing the raw materials from S.C. I. East Africa and selling them at our cost, so that locals can afford to buy them. At the moment, we are selling the solar cooking materials to build a cooker for about $4. We have to thank SCI East Africa for providing the aluminum foil for free to help keep down the cost.

GRA Tanzania has a beautiful office space on a half acre compound provided for free by the government in support of our activities. Here we are able to store the solar cooking materials, provide solar cooking classes, teach permaculture, host orphan programs and store equipment for the GRA water project –Maji Mengi.

We are very excited about the Solar Cookers project and will continue collaborating with S.C.I. East Africa and S.C.I. in the US to organize follow up workshops in Musoma. More training will be required for graduates to learn further how to promote solar cooking, train others and run small businesses that will generate an income so the project can continue growing and expanding.

02/28/09: Update on Maji Mengi, GRA's water project in Tanzania...

Worldwide, over a billion people still walk miles every day to fetch water for their daily needs – water polluted by livestock, infested with parasites and contaminated by bacteria like cholera, typhoid and dysentry. Many of these people, if not most, are so poor that buying charcoal or wood to boil the water before use is out of the question. Without safe drinking water, health, hope, progress and dignity are impossible.

Faced by this reality in every East African village we’ve visited, in 2006, GRA started raising funds to drill boreholes and install pumps in some of the areas most affected.   After almost a year of frustrating delays with expensive local contractors, we succeeded in drilling one borehole in Kinesi Village - for the price of about $15,000. Fitting the well with a solar pump took another year - and another $15,000. We knew there had to be a better way.

After a lot of thought, we decided that buying our own equipment and hiring experienced Tanzanian drillers was the most cost effective and timely approach. By mid-2008, GRA had raised and borrowed enough money to take the plunge. We purchased a new top quality, US made DeepRock 150 drilling rig, a new Belgian made Atlas Copco air compressor and used vehicles from the UK and Japan to transport the equipment and crew.

After numerous delays and unexpected expenses clearing the vehicles and drilling equipment at the Tanzanian border, GRA’s Maji Mengi (Abundant Water) project finally got underway in January. Our first borehole was drilled in Kibuyi Village, at a site selected last year by volunteer geo-hydrologist Pal Pauer. It proved to be a source of abundant, high quality water that will meet all the drinking water needs of area residents and the nearby government secondary school. The new equipment worked flawlessly and the Tanzanian drilling crew demonstrated great skill and earned our confidence.

Paul van Beers, Dutch geo-hydrologist and developer of the Afripump hand pump, flew in to provide free training for the GRA crew, local water engineers and members of the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) on the installation and use of the Dutch made hand pumps we’ll be installing at the rate of about one per week. As a consultant for the UN, the World Bank and major international development NGOs, and having supervised the drilling of over 1,000 wells throughout Africa, Paul is one of the world’s leading authorities on hand pumps and rural water supply in Africa.

In early February, GRA volunteer geo-hydrologist Pal Pauer returned once again to Tanzania and began locating more drill sites in the rural districts surrounding Musoma. One of these sites, in Utege Village, was the location of our second borehole attempt. Residents have been drawing water from a chocolate brown river that runs through town, even though it is a known source of frequent cholera outbreaks.

After pounding through about 100 feet of bedrock, we began to encounter small amounts of water. At 200 feet down, we hit the mother load – a vein of excellent quality water under enormous pressure that rose to within 10 feet of the surface. There was so much water that our drill stems and drill bit were nearly trapped in the hole by rocks washed down from above.

Pal’s knowledge and experience with what is known as “primary”,” juvenile” or “earth generated” water is perhaps unparalleled.   His generous cooperation over the past several years has been key to the Maji Mengi project and a great blessing to residents in the areas we serve. Said to be generated deep within the earth and forced upwards through fissures and fractures in primary rock (bedrock) under enormous pressure, this abundant resource offers great hope for meeting the growing need of humanity for clean, safe drinking water.

The theory of primary water was developed in the mid 1950s by Pal’s mentor, the late Austrian mining engineer and geologist Stephan Riess, though it was first formulated in the late 1890s by Finnish Nobel Prize nominee, physicist and arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiold . While drilling offshore on rock outcroppings in the North Sea, Nordenskiold encountered vast quantities of clean fresh water that he couldn’t explain using conventional hydrological theories. Building on Nordenskiold’s subsequent research, Riess spent decades refining, extending and demonstrating this theory in many countries around the world.   Given the tremendous potential of primary water, it is surprising that so little interest has been generated among mainstream hydrologists who seem content with conventional approaches.

The third, and final, borehole drilled before Pal and I departed for the US was located at a primary school in rural Komaswa Village. The school and local residents have been drawing their water from a nearby spring fed pond. The underlying quality of the water is good, but grossly polluted, smells foul and is the source of much disease in the area.

As at Kibuyi and Utege, a generous supply of clean, fresh water, protected by many meters of overlaying bedrock, was struck at a depth of about 120 feet and rose to within 22 feet of the surface - to the jubilation of school officials and local residents. We were told that Tanzania’s Prime Minister, Mizengo Pinda, was scheduled to visit this site in the coming weeks as he surveys the desperate water situation in many areas of the country.

During our stay, the Maji Mengi project attracted significant media attention, largely due to the efforts of local project manager Vitalis Lazaro. Several articles appeared in area newspapers and Lazaro, both Pa(u)ls, GRA-Tanzania VP Claud Egito and myself all appeared on local TV stations at one time or another.

While contractors in big cities located hundreds of miles away were quoting villages prices for drilling boreholes (whether productive or dry) of $16,000 to $18,000 (not including the price of the hand pump which can run another $2,000-$3,000), GRA-TZ is drilling community wells for just $4,000 – including the world’s best hand pump. If we fail to get water, the village pays nothing.

Our actual cost totals about $8,000 for both borehole and pump, and is shared among village residents, district councils and GRA’s generous supporters. You can probably imagine the enthusiastic response we've encountered from local communities and government councils who are lining up for our services and the opportunity of enjoying affordable, clean, life saving water.

The next GRA field mission begins in mid-September, 2008 when we begin preparing for the Magi Mengi (Abundant Water) project in the Lake Victoria region of Tanzania. Over the past 5 years, rural East African residents have made it abundantly clear that lack of water is the greatest challenge they face, by far – and that in a region of the world where challenges abound.

It’s hard for most of us to imagine waking up each morning and walking 5 to 10 kilometers – each way – to fetch a bucket of contaminated water from a lake, river, dam or watering hole so the family can wash, drink or prepare food, but this is the situation most village girls and women face each day.

As most villagers are unable to afford charcoal or wood to boil the water they fetch, many parents see their children die of cholera, typhoid and dysentery or themselves contract many of the diseases and parasitic infections related to unsafe water. It is estimated that 80% of the world’s diseases and parasitic infections are due to the use of contaminated water.

So for years GRA has been exploring ways of addressing this tragedy – at least in the small area of Tanzania where we focus our efforts. Fortunately, we have been blessed by the volunteer services of master dowser, geologist and water resource development expert Pal Pauer of the United States. With the outstanding support and generosity of GRA supporters, we have raised and borrowed the $250,000 needed to purchase the drilling equipment and vehicles required to bring safe clean water to rural villages using well locating and drilling techniques developed by Pal’s mentor, the late Stephan Riess of Ojai, California.