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| Plymouth Magazine, June 2007 |
A glass half full
A Plymouth couple works to build wells and homes in Haiti
by Kelly Westhoff
After respective careers as a dentist and a director at the Viking Council of The Boy Scouts of America, Ron and Donna Axel have finally left the working world behind and entered retirement. But that doesn't mean their lives have slowed down. They list traveling, gardening, biking, mountain hiking and running marathons among their hobbies. “We rarely sit still,” smiles Ron. “We believe in living while we're alive.”
The Axels also believe in helping others. Donna has been a volunteer big sister for more than 16 years while Ron has been an active Rotary member for 36 years. Increasingly, the couple's volunteering interests involve clean water projects. “Every day, around the world, 6,000 kids die from contaminated water. That's the equivalent of twelve 747s. Imagine twelve 747s going down in one day and everyone on board those planes dying. Now imagine that happening every day,” Ron says. Ingesting contaminated water, he explains, can lead to dysentery and diarrhea. If left untreated, both cause dehydration and death.
Ron developed an interest in clean water issues when his Rotary district received a hefty donation with two strings attached. The first of those strings stipulated that the monetary gift be matched. Secondly, once collected, all of the money was to be spent on clean water efforts. Ron became involved in the fundraising push and helped initiate the beginning water projects. In partnership with several volunteer organizations, the group completed 10 well projects in Nepal and countries throughout Africa and Central America.
Ron's fundraising efforts have grown beyond the donor's initial requests and now include a Web site aimed at teaching other nonprofit groups how to address fresh water concerns (www.safewaterplus.org). His Rotary district is completing a $2 million water project in Haiti 's Central Plateau. They're drilling 80 wells and constructing 475 latrines.
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Haiti, just 600 miles from Florida , is the Western hemisphere 's poorest nation. In the country's Central Plateau region, nearly 23 percent of the children die before age 5 because of contaminated water. People pull their daily water from rivers and transport it across several miles in buckets. “For us, it's an inconvenience not to have electricity or hot water, but in Haiti it's a way of life,” Donna explains.
In December, the Axels flew to Haiti. They participated in a ten-day mission trip organized by Haiti Outreach, a Minnetonka-based nonprofit and another of their fundraising partners. The trip was Ron's third visit to the region and Donna's first. Their goal was to build a home for a family living in one of the communities with a well that they had helped provide. “The house we built was constructed out of sticks and stones,” Ron says. “Literally, I mean sticks and stones.”
The remainder of this article can be found in the June 2007 issue of Plymouth Magazine.
To learn more about Safe Water Plus, visit www.safewaterplus.org
To learn more about Haiti Outreach, visit www.haitioutreach.org