From Serving Wine to Serving Humanity
**Note - please excuse the typos. This transcript was automatically generated.**
Hetal Baman (00:00:00) - Richard, thank you for being here. Thank you for being on the Global Health Pursuit Podcast. I'm very, very excited for this conversation.
Richard Vanderburg (00:00:07) - Sure. Really excited to be with you and thanks for the opportunity.
Hetal Baman (00:00:10) - Of course. So, when I first learned about Wine to Water, I think the first question that came to mind was interesting name for an organization, right. Wine to Water. There has to be a story behind that. I was wondering if you could clue us in, give us a little bit of a brief background on where that name came from.
Richard Vanderburg (00:00:30) - Sure. So Doc Henley, who founded the organization 18 years ago, first got the inspiration to do it as a bartender. So he became aware of the global water crisis and felt like as an ordinary person, there must be something that can be done. So he reached out to his network and started hosting fundraisers within the bars, restaurants where he was working and with friends. And the idea of supporting water through wine is where it came from.
Hetal Baman (00:00:57) - That's such a good story and I'm, I'm really glad that he named the organization Wine to Water, cuz I think it also builds some curiosity as well. So anyways, I want you to tell us your story. You joined Wine to Water as Chief Program Officer, what's your background? What brought you to Wine to Water, and what do you do?
Richard Vanderburg (00:01:20) - So, my background, once upon a time, a long, long time ago, , I was a, you're not
Hetal Baman (00:01:25) - That old, let me just say .
Richard Vanderburg (00:01:27) - Um, so my background is as a registered nurse. I grew up in Brisbane, in Queensland, Australia. Mm-hmm. . And, you know, it was, it was an interesting time to be involved in healthcare. Australia's a developed country, so I worked in the operating room and whenever we needed more, there was always more in the closet. Whenever we needed more staff, there was always someone to call. And then in the mid nineties I got involved in volunteer programs in Southeast Asia as a nurse. And I was struck by the fact that it was different, that the supplies ran out. There wasn't anyone else to call and the need for people to get healthcare was overwhelming. Right. And going back to Brisbane, it was a very disquiet time because I couldn't resolve just the fundamental inequity of being in a place of so plenty. And having experienced a place of such lack of stuff and people that I felt I should do something about that
Hetal Baman (00:02:22) - It's like a culture shock. Right. When you come back from a, from a place like that, I can relate to that so much cuz when I come back from India, I'm like, oh, we have running water here. We don't have to heat the water in a geezer before we take a bath. Yep. It's shocking. It, like, it's, it's just a shock to the system when you come back. For
Richard Vanderburg (00:02:44) - Sure. So at that point, my career trajectory took a sharp left turn and I sort of gave up the nursing game and got involved with humanitarian organizations largely in delivering healthcare in low middle income countries, particularly with the focus on Asia. Spent a lot of time in India, which was always a, a, a treasure. And for the last five years I've been involved in humanitarian programming in the health space, in the development space. What brought me to water, we joked about the idea of water being an interesting concept, but I think, well I, as a fan,
Hetal Baman (00:03:17) - Uh, sorry to impre interrupt, but when I read Wine to Water, it almost brings to mind a religious aspect, like a religious concept because I'm not very religious and I'm also not Christian, but
Richard Vanderburg (00:03:29) - Yep. People have heard the story of water to wine as a, as a biblical parable. So I think there's definitely something about that. But as a foundational principle, I think what Doc started with, and the way the organization's grown is ordinary people have an extraordinary opportunity to make change in the world. Hmm. He started making a change because he believed that water and the lack of water for people in impoverished environments just wasn't right. Right. And he chose to do something about it. And in terms of what's brought me to wine, to water, it's just that same experience that we don't have to be politicians, we don't have to be celebrities to make a difference in the world, to make a positive change. And wine to water is largely a collection of ordinary folks trying to make the world a better place.
Hetal Baman (00:04:16) - I absolutely love that point that you made because oftentimes I think a normal ordinary person might think, oh, I only have like 300 people on my social media, I only have like 10 people in my close network. How can I make a difference? And a lot of times it's these grassroots movements that really do make an impact. And you don't need to be a celebrity, you don't need to be a politician. I think that's just a huge, huge, huge thing that hinders a lot of people from actually stepping out there and, and doing something.
Richard Vanderburg (00:04:54) - Yeah. And, and ultimately, you know, we like to believe that life is a contact sport. So some of these big problems in terms of global health and development, they're really hard to conceptualize and do something about at the global macro level. But by just showing up, by having contact and making a difference in one person's life is how we make the world change.
Hetal Baman (00:05:16) - Right. So if I were to ask you, what does your day-to-day life look like when you wake up in the morning, you're like, okay, I'm gonna log into work, I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z. What does that look like for you?
Richard Vanderburg (00:05:29) - So we're an international organization, so we have program offices across the world in Nepal, Tanzania, Dominican, Republican, Columbia. And we support program partners in multiple other countries. So for example, this morning started with a phone call, our Nepal office at six o'clock. Wow. Just to check in on some planning and budget and, and Nepal, like our team there is amazing. The problem in Nepal is almost exclusively around geography. Mm. So villages are in the hills and the water runs through the valley and it's largely the girls and women's responsibility to trek down to the valley to collect the water and carry it back up to the village. And because of that, there's a limited use of water. So things like agriculture aren't supported. So our work in Nepal is to run pipes down to the, the valley floor, use solar lifting pumps to pump water up, pump the water into household so that each house has a tap stand and a laboratory. And improved hygiene, improved irrigation for agriculture. And it just frees up not only in terms of opportunity to earn income around agriculture, and not only improved health related to increased access to water and sanitation, but you think about the facets of women's empowerment in terms of freeing the women from the responsibility of collecting water, which takes literally hours a day, hours mm-hmm. and what that can turn into in terms of contribution to society as well.
Hetal Baman (00:06:54) - Yeah. In another episode, I speak with Lumbe, who, she's the founder and president of JB Dal and their focus is bringing water to communities in Zimbabwe. And she was talking about that, that same thing where sometimes these women have to trek hours and hours, they'll get up really early in the morning, trek down, grab the water, trek back up, and can you just imagine the amount of other things, the number of other things they could be doing than trekking during that time?
Richard Vanderburg (00:07:32) - Yeah. And, and I also think it's an interesting framing perspective too. If I had to walk with a five gallon bucket of water for a couple of miles, I could probably do it mm-hmm. . But it's the reality for these folks every single day that it's the outbound trip and the return trip. And like I said, it's if you have to carry the water that far, you limit the amount of water. And we know that there's problems related to limited consumption of water in terms of hygiene and sanitation as well. So I, I would like to tell you that my days are long and extensive, but it, it's nothing compared to the reality of people who are living with water scarcity. And in addition to Nepal, I have the absolute privilege of working with an extraordinary team of colleagues across the world who are either working in the emergency response domain or working in the community development water sanitation domain and everything that goes into that.
Hetal Baman (00:08:25) - So you mentioned working in the emergency response, so I know that that's something that's a big part of your job. And I wanna ask, when it comes to really guiding disaster relief programs, where, where does one start with that?
Richard Vanderburg (00:08:41) - Yeah, so I think everybody tells the story of programming being needs based, but in a really complex and confusing environment, it's really hard to figure out what the need is. So most of our responses, I was in Turkey, Turkey a few weeks ago managing part of our response there. It really starts with a really detailed assessment of understanding what is the problem that we can help address and what can we try and solve? And that's really unique depending on the environment. So for example, in Turkey, the government had done an amazing job of providing shelter and bottled water and emergency food supplies to communities who are affected by the earthquake. And the magnitude of the earthquake is really hard to understand because it's like 50,000 square kilometers is the footprint of disaster. What that translates to is if you're driving down the highway for hundreds of miles, every village, town, city, you see destruction buildings down.
Richard Vanderburg (00:09:34) - Right. And when we were sort of trying to figure out how can we help, one of the biggest areas of concern amongst the agricultural community was that they largely use irrigation wells to, to water their crops. And the wells had been disrupted because of the seismic activity. So although it's not an immediate thing, they had bottled water, they had shelter. Unless there was an effort to reconstruct that irrigation capability, that'll be the next slow emerging disaster when the crops fail in a few months time. So by looking at the assessment, by talking to people, by getting understanding of what their needs were, we were able to design a program to understand the impact on wells and do something about it.
Hetal Baman (00:10:15) - And to do that fast too. Right. So like after the earthquake happened in Syria and Turkey, how fast did your people move?
Richard Vanderburg (00:10:25) - Yeah, so we had had folks on the ground within three days. Oh wow. Which again, is a very uncertain environment. And what was unusual in Turkey compared to other places where we've had emergency responses is we're largely dealing with a middle income country. Mm-hmm. . So the level of infrastructure was, although disrupted, there was something to begin with, which is very different to some of the other natural disasters we see related to things like super typhoons in the Philippines, for example. And in the early days of that assessment was really looking for collaborations and partnerships. And again, looking for what is the, the value that we can bring to the environment was sort of our immediate focus.
Hetal Baman (00:11:03) - Right. I think that the question that comes to my mind is really how do you prioritize what to do first? Because I mean, it's almost like sheer panic. There's an earthquake that happens, people don't have homes anymore, they don't have water anymore. What does that look like? What does the process of just prioritizing things?
Richard Vanderburg (00:11:25) - Yeah. So I, I remember reading somewhere once that you sort of can't live without oxygen for four minutes. You can't live without food for four days and you can't live without water for four weeks or 40 days. Mm-hmm. . And so our unique focus on water is because we believe it to be fundamental and elemental to survival, but also it's the thing that enables so many other good things to happen. And again, going back to needs based programming in Turkey, what we heard consistently was we understand we have a tent, we understand we have some bottled water, we understand we have some food. The thing we would really love is just a hot shower because it's cold, it was snowing and we've been out of our houses now for a week or two. And the basic hygiene had transcended from emergency response to sustaining some level of that. So you come back to the idea that it's, it's largely needs based and that just requires a lot of talking to people to understand what, what their needs are.
Hetal Baman (00:12:20) - That's so interesting. You know, all I want is a hot shower.
Richard Vanderburg (00:12:23) - I think we can all get on board with that. Right? Yes. After a couple of weeks of being displaced from your home as that being just something that's really important from like medical hygiene perspective, but just from a personal life experience,
Hetal Baman (00:12:38) - That kind of thing really humanizes the people in these areas. It's like, well it's not just a large group, it's not just a popul population of people who went through this. You know, it's like all of us individual human, it's just very humanizing and almost humbling, you know, to hear
Richard Vanderburg (00:12:56) - Yeah, you, you're very right. It's easy to look at the news reports and see, I think the, the sort of northwest area of Syria, there was 4.7 million who were displaced before the earthquake and after the earthquake, 4.3 million need some level of humanitarian assistance. I don't know how to imagine that as being a number that you can conceptualize, but again, I think that's congruent with like the founding principles of wine, water, and our worldview is that it is a contact sport, it is an interpersonal human to human interaction. And that ordinary people can make a big difference in the world.
Hetal Baman (00:13:29) - I love the use of the term contact sport. Did that come from wine to water or what what? I've never heard that in terms of a program, you know, or an organization. Yeah.
Richard Vanderburg (00:13:40) - I, I, I don't think we lay claim to it. I think it probably comes back from the early eighties days of business and sales and all of that idea that connection between people is what's really important. But it certainly does translate to the work that we're doing.
Hetal Baman (00:13:55) - Right. So aside from disaster relief, what are some of the other programs that Wine to Water is working on right now?
Richard Vanderburg (00:14:03) - So there's a framework we've been using to understand the dimensions of the problems related to water and hygiene and sanitation and the accessibility, the availability, the acceptability and the affordability of water and water services. So obviously they're all uniquely disrupted in time of emergency. And our response is to try and help in restoring availability and accessibility of water above all, all other things. But in more like traditional programming and more Aus environments. So like the Amazon region of Columbia in the intersection of Peru, Columbia, Brazil, the issue in terms of availability is that seasonally outside of the wet season, there's very limited availability of water. So people do rainwater harvesting during the wet season. The water runs out, there's scarcity. So some of our work there is focused on drilling ball holes and wells constructing water towers and plumbing water into individual households. So that sort of addresses the accessibility and availability and owe that, that was all there was to do because there's also problems with the acceptability or the quality of the water.
Richard Vanderburg (00:15:06) - So oftentimes if you drill wells, you also drill into heavy metals that can be harmful for people or for rainwater harvesting. There can be bacteria growing in the water supply and in the tanks and the lines. So there's additional programs in terms of improving the quality of the water that's being supplied. We use filtration technology to do that in a lot of cases, particularly in emergency response. And then ultimately the affordability is a really, really complex problem that we sort of weighed into every community that we start programming in. We start by establishing a water usage committee, which is representative of the local community. Cause that makes sure that we have programs that fit the defined need from the population we're hoping to impact. But we also look for opportunities to co-invest. So if we're digging trenches to lay pipe to go from the water tower to a community or individual households, we expect participation from people within the village to help with the, the work towards making that water available. And oftentimes the Water usage Committee will levy a usage fee, a modest usage fee to the folks in the community to make sure that there is local ownership and ongoing participation in projects.
Hetal Baman (00:16:16) - So that fee, is that what the locals will pay to continue?
Richard Vanderburg (00:16:23) - Yeah. So if, if there's a pump that's involved, there's usage costs, cost related to the pump, that's something that, uh, we work with communities to make sure that there's an ongoing financing mechanism to make sure that the water is available and we'll set it up and get it going and then turn it over to the community.
Hetal Baman (00:16:38) - That's a really interesting model because it almost gives ownership to the community to say, you know, we, we have invested in this as well.
Richard Vanderburg (00:16:47) - Yeah. I think that, I'm sure you've experienced it too. The world is littered with projects being driven by high income countries to implement a solution that ultimately can't be sustained. Yeah. Or doesn't fit culturally. And the benefit of the Water Usage Committee is we have local participation from the design all the way through to the ultimate ownership of the project moving forward.
Hetal Baman (00:17:08) - I think that's really, really interesting. So I saw that there is a new documentary that's coming out. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Richard Vanderburg (00:17:17) - So a again, I think there's, there's some unique things about Winder Water's worldview. We believe in water and we believe that the story of how the lack of water and the impact that has on communities, we feel that story's been undertold. So we're really excited to continue to be able to share real human experiences in terms of living a life without water. We're really excited to share with people the perspective of our international staff and people who volunteered with us on trips to, and we're really excited to highlight the involvement in some of our partners in, in making Water available.
Hetal Baman (00:17:56) - Do you guys have a volunteer program in terms of like bringing people to these other countries?
Richard Vanderburg (00:18:01) - Yes. We run, I guess it's like 20 volunteer trips every year. Oh
Hetal Baman (00:18:06) - Wow. Okay.
Richard Vanderburg (00:18:07) - So for example, in Nepal when we're doing that project of bringing the water from the valley up to the hilltop to make the water available to, to villages and to individual households, we use volunteers from within the country and from the local community as well as international volunteers to do the very in glorious job of digging the trenches to lay the pipes. And we couldn't do the work without our great volunteers.
Hetal Baman (00:18:30) - I mean, if you're listening to this and you wanna go volunteers somewhere, please consider wine to Water. Cuz I think the work that they're doing is incredible. But I think that one thing that really stands out to me is the involvement of the community that they're working in. So like you said, the volunteers not only come from the US or high un high income countries, but also their own country, which I think this is, this is really, really unique. I do wanna ask one more question to you, Richard. What can people do to support the mission at Wine to Water?
Richard Vanderburg (00:19:04) - So probably the easiest thing is to go to our website, wtw.org. Um, there you'll get the experience of some of the stories we've been talking about and a familiarity with how we do things. So I think sort of immediately in terms of how to know more and know how to participate either as a volunteer or as a supporter. There's a, a wealth of information there, but I think it's also a really valuable communication tool in terms of the global water crisis and what's happening. And again, I think going back to when Doc started the organization, the idea was that ordinary people can make a difference. We choose to make a difference related to issues around water in low middle income countries and and vulnerable communities. But I think there's something about that that translates to everybody. Yeah. So maybe you care about water, maybe you care about childhood vaccination, maybe you care about mosquito nets.
Richard Vanderburg (00:19:53) - I think the important thing is just to understand that we as individual human beings, as ordinary people can make a difference. And finding a way for that outflow is just part of how we see the world and how we the world we choose to live in. And I think that's an opportunity for everyone to, to think about that in their own perspective. And maybe it's water, maybe it's something else. But I mean, your podcast is a great example of the vehicle that you've chosen with which to make a difference in the world. And I think just making sure that there's an understanding that again, you don't have to be a politician, you don't have to be a movie star. You don't have to be a celebrity to make something happen in the world. Ordinary people can make a huge change.
Hetal Baman (00:20:32) - That's it. Thank you so much for being here, Richard. It was such a pleasure. Thanks
Richard Vanderburg (00:20:36) - Again for the opportunity.