Busy Vancouver actress and filmmaker Pauline Egan (Sanctuary, Through the Pane) is heading out of town for the summer, but not for an extended vacation or a glamorous shoot in a faraway location.
Instead, the Aussie-born actress – who also happens to be a trained nurse with a post-graduate certificate in primary health care in developing countries – will spend two months on the ground in Chibanane, Mozambique with Water Underground, an NGO determined to provide access to clean, safe water to the entire rural population of Mozambique.
There, Egan will draw upon her medical background to write and implement a sanitation and hygiene program with the aim of preventing disease in more than 100 remote villages.
“What goes hand in hand with building a well and giving people access to clean water – something they’ve never had – is educating the people in the community about the correlations between water and disease, and the fact that 80% of deaths, especially in children, are directly related to waterborne disease,” Egan says in a recent phone interview.
Egan is developing a resource manual for community officials so that the newly established clean water programs can successfully continue long after Water Underground has moved on to the next well and village.
“If they can wash their food with clean water, if they’re able to drink clean water, and if they’re able to wash their hands in clean water, that’s three ways that they would have possibly been contracting gastrointestinal diseases that now they’ll have nullified,” says Egan.
Water Underground is the brainchild of Justin Arana. In 2014, Arana wrote, directed, and starred in a film about the clean water crisis, entitled My Name is Water, that was produced by Sharon Stone.
Egan met Arana when My Name is Water and Egan’s Through the Pane screened as part of the Hollywood Film Festival.
In addition to developing the sanitation and hygiene resource material during her time in Chibanane, Egan intends to begin work on a documentary.
“I’ve decided that I’m going to focus a lot on women's issues there, because there’s gender inequality, and stigma attached to menstruation, and women are the people who carry the water,” says Egan.
“Women walk six miles a day to carry this dirty water on their heads, and so if I can learn some of the stories of some of these amazing, strong, courageous, hard-working women, and then experience their journey over the two months once they then have the access to the clean water well – frankly, I’m looking forward to learning and sharing their stories.”
Egan is fundraising for the trip at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pauline-s-trip-to-mozambique-with-waterunderground#/story. Follow her journey on Twitter at @paulineegan.
