Water, Water, Everywhere: The Tap Project

Ardsley resident Kathleen Kelly Malone has volunteered to help out the very worth Tap Project, raising money and awareness to help the billions around the world without clean drinking water or sanitation facilities. Ardsley Today decided to interview Ms. Malone to find out more:

What is the Tap Project?
The point of the Project is to raise money for UNICEF's efforts to provide clean and safe water to the billion plus people in the world who do no have access to such water.  Because of this lack, a child dies of water-related illness every 15 seconds, either from pneumonia {the spread of germs because there is no sanitation} or diarrhea {unsafe water}.  UNICEF hopes that through the Tap Project it will raise $1,000,000. during the week of March 16th through March 22nd.  How?  By asking restaurant patrons to donate one dollar for the water they normally get for free.

This is the second year of the Project, begun in NYC last March.  In just one day in just one city restaurant patrons donated $100,000 !!!  This year the Project has been expanded throughout the country and for an entire week.  Participating restaurants can choose to use the entire week or just a day, whatever they wish.  World Water Day is March 22nd.

How did you find out about the Tap Project?
My husband and I have contributed to UNICEF for the past five years or so, and thus receive their emails.  I signed on last year to be a volunteer, but had not yet been involved in anything...till I read of this Project in an email I received in January.  I immediately signed up, and attended a day long training session at the UNICEF building in early February.

What attracted you to this cause?
The Tap Project has particular meaning for me because I experienced first hand what the lack of water and clean sanitation can do:  as a college student at Fordham University I spent three summers living in a small town in Mexico.  I lived with a "middle class" family [that is, they owned their little home, it had a cement -not dirt- floor, and they had an outhouse].  But most families lived in little shacks with dirt floors and no access to water.  Children with whom I had played one summer had died by my return there the next summer.  Dehydration was the principal cause.  My second summer there I, too, became quite ill and had to be hospitalized.  The priest who was sponsoring us insisted on my hospitalization because his own parents had died of dehydration.  The dehydration in these instances was caused by the use of unsanitized water and the resultant illnesses, which lead to dehydration.

What can people do to get involved?
Many restaurants  in Manhattan have signed on, and several in Westchester.  In Ardsley, Pumpernickel on 9A has agreed to participate for the entire week (Editor's note: In our area, Harvest on Hudson and Global Gatherings are also participating).  Interested people can check out which restaurants are participating by logging onto TapProject.org.  Also, there will be a full page ad in the NY Times on March 17th listing all the restaurants that signed up.