Store owner helping provide water for African communities

Here in Southeast Louisiana, where the heat index can push temperatures into the triple digits, a cool glass of water is something we often take for granted.

In the African country of Kenya, though, it is much harder to come by, and the owner of a Slidell boutique is hoping to help change that.

JoAnn Basanez is the proprietor of Accents & Things, a small gifts and accessories store in the Cross Gates Shopping Center. In business for 27 years, Basanez has often supported several organizations with donations of cash and/or merchandise for charity auctions, door prizes, raffles and more. Now, she’s expanding the scope of those she wants to help.

“Brighton, a company that makes leather handbags, recently began selling jewelry made of clay beads from Mt. Kilimanjaro; a small portion is donated to help build wells in Kenya,” said Basanez. “I thought, why not donate all of the proceeds?”

Basanez has often participated in the company’s campaigns, such as a recent program to raise $100,000 for breast cancer research. The goal of the latest campaign, begun June 27, is to raise $250,000 for Charity: Water, an organization dedicated to providing clean water to third-world communities. Basanez is determined to raise $4,000 on her own.

She first visited Africa with her family about eight years ago; her most recent trip, to Mali in early 2007, took her to a tiny farming village.

“It was at the end of this long dirt road, and hundreds of people had just one well to support them,” she said. “It occurred to me that maybe I could give them a well, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it.”

The group leader on that trip helped her with research, and came up with a Christian relief organization, but Basanez felt the scope of the group’s mission was too broad. Funds could not be directed to specific projects, and she was committed to helping poverty-stricken African villages find clean water.

Then came the Brighton campaign, and Charity: Water.

Founded by a 32-year-old New Yorker in 2006, the organization has funded 633 water projects in 12 countries. The money raised through Brighton will go directly to help build wells for clinics and hospitals in Kenya, where water is often pumped unfiltered from nearby rivers, brown and cloudy.

A campaign video tells the story of one such clinic, Mogotio Health Center, which served 30,000 people and had no clean water. It can’t be boiled, as residents are too poor to afford charcoal or wood for the fire. Charity: Water enlisted the help of local teams to drill a deep well and install the piping system, storage tanks, and community kiosk with taps. The average cost? About $35,000.

The video also cites startling statistics, such as the fact that 80 percent of disease is caused by bad water and unsanitary conditions. A child dies every 15 seconds, and 4,500 people die daily from water-borne diseases.

“That’s what really gets you,” said Basanez. “To see how many people are dying.”

Having sold out of the jewelry, as well as wristbands that were selling for $5 each, Basanez is now simply collecting cash donations. Brighton was also offering a special bottle of water that sold for $20, but Basanez declined to stock those, saying it didn’t make sense to ship bottled water from California to her store, when so many others were going without.

She’s about halfway to her goal, and has only another week to go before the campaign ends on July 27.

“Lots of people have only certain causes they contribute to, and I understand that,” she said. “But we fritter away so much money on little things every day, and that money could really make a difference.”