"Providing Clean Drinking Water and Sanitation in Ethiopia"
Ruth Ann Halford
SBA Lender (retired) HomeStreet Bank
Introduced by: John Martinka
The Lake Union Rotary Club is involved with a project to bring clean drinking water and sanitation to schools in Ethiopia. Here is a chance to understand the status of this project and the desired results. Some feedback is below –
“Today Larry Logue and I visited two schools in Addis Ababa where the Rotary Club of Lake Union, in partnership with Splash International, is providing clean drinking water and hand washing stations in high-need public schools. Many of the schools in Ethiopia are actually large campuses which include three buildings: Elementary, Middle, and High school. Because of this, the first school that we visited, Miazia 23, was much larger than anticipated making the impact of our project readily apparent. The principal of this school shared that many of the kids do not have access to clean water at home, and before our project, did not have it at school either. I was very excited to hear from him that he has seen attendance improve and the school is now considered a “model” school by the Education Bureau of Addis Ababa.”
About the Speaker
She retired from HomeStreet Bank as an SBA lender, having worked with small businesses in many industries from manufacturing to marinas to movies. She also spent many years working for non-traditional lenders and business counseling agencies in Seattle, Bremerton and on The Olympic Peninsula where she worked with resorts, bicycle shops, fishing guides, bowling alleys and many other small businesses.
Ruth Ann was one of the first women in Rotary as a member of the Seattle International District Club, where she was very active with the Rotary Exchange Student program, hosting students from Japan, Argentina and Austria.
Prior to that she lived and worked in Senegal, Ghana, The UK, and Japan where she honed her interest in learning about other places and people.