Join Laura in Bringing Clean Water to Togoville

My name is Laura Aluka. I am a Togolese/Haitian high school student from Fort Lauderdale, FL. I traveled to a city called Togoville, Togo in West Africa in the summer of 2021 to visit my family. Togoville is the oldest city in Togo, and around 5,000 people live there. Some of the people living in the village of Togoville use wells that are as old as 1910 (as seen in the video). My family, living in a different village of Kpele-Tsiko, have the ability to have a drilled well and clean plumbing for their drinking water and other needs; however, this is not established yet in Togoville. The wells are very unsafe to drink from, and the people of Togoville deserve much better!

I took this initiative to my high school and conducted lab research comparing natural filtration methods (featuring apple and tomato peels, Moringa seeds, and sand) and industrial filtration methods (BRITA filters, activated charcoal, and boiling water methods) to filter out two bacteria and two chemicals from water. My research concluded that the natural filtration methods, as well as the boiling water methods, were more consistent and successful in filtering the water than the industrial filtration methods.

So, I took this research to start my non-profit organization, Togo Together. The initiative of my organization is to raise funds to establish water sanitation relief systems in Togoville's villages: electric water kettles and solar power banks as a temporary system, and eventually implementing a drilled well and plumbing system! The drilled well and installation in total will amount to $6,000, and the goal is to reach this by December of 2025! Please donate if you can to support this cause!