Clean water is a tremendous need in Haiti and in the developing world in general. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the total deaths each year from waterborne diseases is nearly 5 million. Besides death, waterborne diseases can also lead to blindness or lesions of internal organs among other illnesses. The same source states that at any given time, about 1 billion people have a waterborne disease.
      Knowing how beneficial clean water can be to the health of people in developing countries, Mike Bellamy set out to select a water treatment system for the House of Hope. As he studied about water disinfection, three things stuck out to him:
(1) No one water treatment technology meets the needs of every site in a developing country.
(2) There are many, many examples of well-intentioned water projects failing. See Why Projects Fail.
(3) A Water Training School in Haiti that would teach several different methods of purifying water would potentially bless many thousands of people in Haiti very quickly.
      After considerable studying, Bellamy concluded that none of the currently available water treatment options were an ideal fit for the House of Hope Haiti. Consequently, he began working with another professor and some students to design a do-it-yourself system that could be used not only at the House of Hope, but by anyone who wanted to build one. The design they came up with is a Solar Water Pasteurizer.