By Greg Forester, Staff Writer
PLAINSBORO — An Indian village 300 miles outside of Mumbai, formerly Bombay, now has its own water supply, thanks to the work of two eighth-graders at Princeton Day School.
Rujul Zaparde, 13, was able to venture back to his father’s home village in India to oversee construction of a 250-foot-deep well last month after he and Kevin Petrovic, 13, raised $1,000 last year with the help of their classmates and the community.
Before the arrival of Rujul and the new water source, people living in the village of Paras had to literally go out of their way to get any life-sustaining water.
”The village people, including women and children, had to walk about a kilometer each way and then wait in line to get a bucket of water,” said Rujul, a Plainsboro resident. “They had to do this twice a day, with only a few buckets of water to wash, cook, or clean back at the village each day.”
He contrasted the condition in Paras to people in America, saying Americans can sometimes use 50 gallons of water during a hot shower.
”When I went over to visit the village for the first time in December of 2006, that was when I got exposed to the poverty that was going on over there,” Rujul said.
After returning to the United States from India following his first visit to his father’s home village, Rujul discussed options for trying to help out the villagers in some kind of meaningful way with his schoolmate, Kevin.
”He became interested, and he also knew I was into this kind of stuff,” said Kevin, a Princeton resident. “We decided this was the best thing to do. Water is more of a necessity than electricity.”
The two PDS students said they first considered raising money and donating it to a charity organization, but then decided otherwise.
”We wanted to get the satisfaction out of doing something ourselves,” Rujul said.
To create awareness and start raising the $1,000 necessary to build what is called a hand pump-equipped “tube” well for the village, Rujul and Kevin founded the Drinking Water for the Developing World Club at PDS.
The club included more than 15 members as of the fall of last year, Rujul said.
Working at the school and in the Princeton area, the organization was able to raise $1,000, including a $500 donation from the school’s fifth grade, which happened to be studying India at the time.
That money allowed Rujul to journey back to Paras this past December, and watch the installation of the well that now gives the village a much more convenient source of usable water.
The fruit of their efforts in Princeton is the tube well in Paras. It is a six-inch-wide well, drilled 250 feet into the ground, according to Rujul.
Rujul and Kevin aren’t done with the installation of the first well.
After being asked about their nonprofit status by local corporations they sought assistance from, the duo and their organization filed papers and officially became a nonprofit in December, called Drinking Water for India Inc.
They plan on making presentations to local companies in the near future, according to Kevin, who said he hopes to make a trip to India with Rujul this summer to oversee the installation of additional wells for other villages.
Their nonprofit group can be found on the Web at http://www.drinkingwaterforindia.org.
