A 110,700 Baht joint project with a Japanese Rotary club has installed a clean water system at a school in Chiangmai. 96 children and 14 teachers now have safe water. Here's how it happened.
Before the project, the water at Wat Nong Luang School in Chiangmai Province came from a well.
Independent testing found total dissolved solids at 459 mg/L — well above safe levels — along with Coliform bacteria and E. coli.
Some parents could send their children to school with bottled water. Many couldn't. The children whose families couldn't afford it were drinking from the contaminated supply.
It's not a complicated problem to solve, once someone decides to solve it.
The Fix
The Rotary Club of Bangkok and the Rotary Club of Tokyo Shintoshin split the cost equally — 55,350 Baht each, totalling 110,700 Baht. The project was proposed by the Rotary Club of Sarapee in Chiangmai, which identified the school and managed things locally.
Installation was completed in February 2025. The system provides free, clean drinking water to all 96 students and 14 staff at the school. It's also available to villagers in the surrounding community.
The supplier — a Rotarian — has committed to training school staff to maintain the system and has provided spare parts for a two-year period. An extra 7,700 Baht was spent before the project began on water quality testing, to confirm this school genuinely had the worst supply among candidates. A further 2,000 Baht covers a signboard acknowledging the Rotary Club of Tokyo Shintoshin's sponsorship.
Why Japan?
It's not a coincidence. PP Chiemi Svensson, a Past President of the Club and a Japanese national, has spent years building the Club's relationships with Japanese Rotary clubs. Those relationships mean that when we identify a project that qualifies for international co-funding, there are partners ready to contribute.
In 2024–25 alone, the Club ran joint clean water projects with both RC Tokyo Shintoshin (Chiangmai) and RC Okegawa (Nan Province). In the Nan project, the Japanese clubs contributed 111,540 Baht of the 176,700 Baht total.
This is how international Rotary is supposed to work: clubs in wealthier countries co-funding projects in communities that need them, managed by a local club that knows the context and handles the delivery.
The Bigger Picture
The Wat Nong Luang project is one of three clean water installations completed or started by the Club in 2024–25. The second, in Nan Province, brings clean water to two more rural primary schools in the remote Bokluea district — 194 pupils and 17 staff who are currently drinking from contaminated wells.
Together, the three 2024–25 projects cost roughly 287,400 Baht and will provide clean water to around 400 children and staff. The health cost of waterborne illness among those children — in treatment, missed school days, and long-term impact — is many times that amount.
The Rotary Club of Bangkok has been installing clean water systems at rural schools since 2008. If you want to fund a water project or connect us with a school that needs one, get in touch.