Harvey Sellner, Rotary Humanitarian, Honored

Harvey Sellner was awarded the Abraham I. Gordon Achievement Award by Richard Benson, governor of Rotary District 7980 at the District’s Annual Conference in Providence, R.I., presented earlier this month. The award recognizes a Rotarian who has made a significant impact on the lives of people in his or her community or in the international community, which advances Rotary International’s goal of “World Peace through Understanding.”

Mr Sellner has been spearheading a Safe Water Project of the Newtown Rotary Club. The object is to provide a Water Purification Unit (WPU) to hospitals, clinics, and public facilities internationally.

Units have been successfully placed in operation in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Honduras, and Columbia; some have been successfully operating for as long as ten years. Used but operational computers have been collected and within the next month, a collection of 100 Water Purification Units, 45 computers, 20 cartons of books, and some medical supplies will all be shipped to Ghana.

Last year Mr Sellner hosted Kwame Pongo of Ghana, a member of the Up with People group of 125 young people representing 25 different countries. While with the Sellners, Kwame spoke of the disease problems they have in Ghana because of the lack of safe drinking water and of the country’s dedication to education as a means to rise from the status of a Third World country.

Last fall, Mr Sellner and his wife, Calla, spent two weeks in Ghana contacting the local Rotary Club of Tema, the Minster of Health and Education, and a number of clinics at which six WPUs were installed. The idea was to organize the receipt, storage, and installation of the material to be sent this month.

In December 1999, Venezuela had a major disaster wherein the side of a mountain virtually slid down. The mudslide was 50 miles wide and in some areas as deep as a five-story building. AmeriCares was one of the first disaster relief organizations on the scene and it became apparent that with the infrastructure wiped out, the surviving people were in desperate need of safe drinking water.

Harvey Sellner was contacted by AmeriCares and with the help of Rotarians Skip Roberts, Fred Parrella, and Ed Osterman, was able to have 50 WPUs ready to ship to Venezuela in cooperation with AmeriCares. In order to show how these units were to be installed, Mr Sellner, along with Ken Erdman, an engineer from Brookfield, went to Venezuela for a week to instruct the local disaster team on how to install the units.

Upon their return and based on the information they now had obtained firsthand, a large system was designed to furnish water to the town of Anare. The challenge was to take the muddy water from the river, clean it, and purify it so it was absolutely safe to drink.

The operation in Venezuela was accomplished by the WHT Foundation (World Help through Technology), of which Harvey Sellner is president and a number of Newtown Rotarians are directors.

The biggest threat to world health is the lack of safe drinking water, and Mr Sellner feels that with the technology now available, there is no reason for people to be dying from water-borne diseases. If enough people and enough firms took this problem seriously and took steps as the WHT Foundation is doing, impure water would become a thing of the past.