Derbyshire charity Aquabox recognised with the Queen’s Award for voluntary Service for 2016

A voluntary group from Wirksworth, Derbyshire, which provides safe drinking water and humanitarian aid worldwide to those in need has been honoured with the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service – the highest award a voluntary group can receive in the UK.

More than 70 volunteers from the local community attend the Aquabox depot each week to assemble the water filters or pack the boxes with humanitarian aid, ready for dispatch to countries suffering from the effects of disasters, whether natural or man-made.

Aquabox is managed and run  by the Rotary Club of Wirksworth. In recognition of the award, chairman of trustees Mike Tomlinson and his wife Dianne, a fellow Aquabox volunteer, attended a garden party at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday 24 May 2016 hosted by the Queen, where they met with other winners of this year’s award.

Mr Tomlinson said: “Everybody connected with Aquabox is absolutely thrilled with this accolade, which recognises the hard work and dedication of all the volunteers who selflessly give up their time to ensure this vital aid goes to places where it’s needed most.

“Dianne and I were proud and humbled to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to represent all of the volunteers at the Buckingham Palace garden party. It’s fantastic that Aquabox has been recognised in this way, and it was also an honour to meet with representatives of other important charities doing great work in the UK and overseas.”

The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service Committee Chair, former broadcast journalist Sir Martyn Lewis, said: “I warmly congratulate all of the inspirational voluntary groups who have been rewarded for their community work with a Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. The thousands of volunteers who give up their spare time to help others in the community and to help solve problems demonstrate the very best of democracy in action.”

Since its formation in 1992, Aquabox has distributed more than 105,000 boxes to crisis zones across the world. It recently sent 4,500 boxes to Turkey and Lebanon to aid Syrian refugees, and shipped almost 2,000 boxes to earthquake-hit Nepal. The plastic boxes consist of a water-filtration unit, cooking utensils, hygiene equipment, tools, shelter materials, baby clothing and educational items.

The charity relies entirely on donations and fundraising to purchase the boxes and their contents.

Aquabox is one of the 193 charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to receive the prestigious award this year. The number of awards given this year is slightly higher than last year, showing that the voluntary sector is thriving and full of innovative ideas to tackle community challenges.

The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service is the highest award given to local volunteer groups across the UK to recognise outstanding work with their communities. The awards were created in 2002 to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and winners are announced each year on 2 June – the anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation.

Aquabox will receive the award from William Tucker, the Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire, later this summer.

For further information on Aquabox visit www.aquabox.org

AQUABOX pulls out the stops to help the Syrian Refugees

On Wednesday 11th November 500 humanitarian aid packages will be loaded into a 40 foot container bound for Eastern Turkey to provide safe drinking water and alleviate the suffering of the Syrian refugees.

The 500 Aquaboxes which contain an Aquafilter – which turns contaminated water into safe drinking water- along with over 70 items of humanitarian aid, have been assembled and packed by our team of over 80 volunteers at the Aquabox Depot in Wirksworth over the past 2 months.

The Aquabox is designed to support a 5 person family unit and could therefore support 2500 refugees and provide at least 900,000 litres of safe drinking water.

To ensure that the aid reaches those who have the greatest need, boxes will be distributed by our trusted partner Hand in Hand for Syria.

In addition to the Syrian response, Aquabox despatched a further 500 boxes to the Philippines on the 6th November to support families caught up in the typhoon that recently struck the islands.

Aquabox is a Rotary supported community charity based in Wirksworth managed, almost entirely, by volunteers drawn from the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire region. These volunteers come to the Cromford Hill depot 4 days of the week to assemble and test the Aquafilters and to pack the Aquaboxes ready for despatch when a catastrophe strikes.

Aquabox has been in operation for 22 years. During this time it has despatched over 100,000 Aquaboxes to countries and regions of the world where a manmade or natural disaster has struck.

For further information please contact

Roger Cassidy
Aquabox Trustee
Tel 01629 820987
Mob 07771 810652
cassidy.roger@gmail.com

Aquabox update

Since completing the previous quarter’s shipments with 200 Aquabox Golds being sent to Rotary District 3292 Nepal in March, AQUABOX has continued its busy schedule.

In the past three months, our volunteer teams have packed 700 Aquabox Golds, with our volunteer AquaFilter assembly teams ensuring that each had a fully operational AquaFilter Family included in the box. All together, these boxes have provided emergency humanitarian aid to a minimum of 3.500 people and our AquaFilters will each produce a minimum of 16, 000 litres of safe drinking water.

In detail, we shipped 100 of these Aquabox Golds to Uganda, for distribution by our long standing partner organisation, CART. This Yorkshire based, voluntary charity also undertaken for a further 100 Aquabox Golds sent to Rwanda. Both countries remain badly affected by the aftermath of unrest and fighting, and CART’s work in supporting communities and offering shelter and education to children is as important today as it ever was. Aquabox’s humanitarian aid is a vital part of CART’s on-going commitment to these communities.

Aquabox also shipped during this quarter 500 Aquabox Golds to Turkey, working with the UK-based Muslim Aid organisation to ensure that this aid reached the most badly affected of the more than 1.5 million refugees from the civil war in Syria. The world has to keep up its efforts to support these often wholly innocent victims of these indiscriminate armed struggles, and Aquabox is proud to be part of those efforts.

We also are about to air freighted 5 AquaFilter Community units direct into Aleppo in Syria, via the Lebanon. These Communities are destined to support nearly 1000 people in that war torn city who are sheltering in three former school building. These people are from all communities formerly living peaceably together in the local area, Muslims, Christians and those of no faith. They are being supported on the ground by Marist Blues at Aleppo, Syria. Marist Blues write:

“The city is completely encircled. There is risk of being taken away or killed. The people are afraid… A fear which depresses, which paralyses, which kills… So the question is posed : what do we do ? Flee, as so many families have done? Stay in place paralysed ? Act ? What to do?
“And those are a drop in a sea of displaced, homeless, stranded… but for us, they are names : Zeinab, Moustapha, Ali, etc… They have a face, they are a history, they are a look, a poem… For them and because of them, we take risks…”

Marist Blues are also supported by Rotarians in California, USA.

In total, Aquabox’s efforts to help in these diverse humanitarian crises has required donation funding of £88, 750.

THANKS TO ALL OUR VOLUNTEERS, SUPPORTERS and DONORS. Without this support, Aquabox would not be able to bring the Gift of Life to so many desperate people around the world.

The Aquabox depot is bare

WE HAVE DESPATCHED 1900 BOX ‘GOLDS’ IN JUST 5 WEEKS. NOW THE DEPOT IS BARE….

Thanks to the efforts of our more local volunteers, and of our supporters from around the UK and the wider world, we have emptied the depot of Aquabox ‘Golds’.

Perhaps you saw Rtn Mike Tomlinson, Chair of Aquabox trustees, on a recent BBC tv East Midlands Today report on the work of the charity.

In the last week, another 500 have been despatched to the Lebanon for aid to refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict. (That a total of 1500 ‘Golds’ and 60 Community Filters now shipped to aid Syrian people, both in the refugee camps outside of Syria but also in the country itself.)

We have despatched this week 100 ‘Golds’ to the Cameroons, in partnership with CART – one of our long standing distribution partner organisations.

But, don’t worry – our volunteer packers and Family Filter assembly teams have already started to ‘build back’ our stock, ready for future humanitarian aid shipments, helped most recently by two youngsters who are volunteering at Aquabox as part of their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award community service project.

And we need those boxes. We have requests for Aquaboxes for Rwanda, for Turkey, and we anticipate for those areas of India likely to be soon effected by the typhoon forecast to hit its eastern states.

Lots done. Lots to do. YOU can help by making a donation to Aquabox today. Please see our donation page on the aquabox.org website.

Related news item:  http://www.ribi.org/news/ribi-news/aquaboxes-head-to-lebanon

News from Aquabox

Aquabox continues to send out is humanitarian aid, thanks to the generosity of supporters and volunteers alike.

500 Aquabox Golds (each containing an AquaFilter Family unit, capable of sustaining a family group of 5 with all of their safe water needs for at least 20,000 litres / 6 months) have just been shipped to the Lebanon. Once there, they will be distributed to Syrian refugees by our partner organisation, Muslim Aid.

We will also be shipping 60 of our AquaFilter Community units, each for placing in schools, clinics and other shared facilities (and producing a minimum of 600, 000 litres of safe drinking water), to Lebanon in the coming week.

We then have 500 Aquabox Golds to ship to Rawanda, via or distribution partner organisation there, Christian African Relief Trust (CART).

Aquabox’s policy is to use local distribution partners in order to ensure that our aid reaches those in most need, and that they do so with support from a local NGO that they know and can trust. We think this is better for assuring effectiveness of aid than might be parachuting in individuals unfamiliar with local needs, traditions and circumstances. It also means that funds donated to us are spent directly on aid, rather than on travel for individuals.

There are regular Aquabox updates on our Rotary:Aquabox Facebook page, as many District Rotarians already know and access, of course.

on behalf of Aquabox trustees, John Dolan, RC Wirksworth