I read today of communities in Ghana where people die daily from dysentery and disease because they do not have clean water. The watering holes are foul and bacteria laden. There is no fuel for citizens to burn to boil the water and kill germs. What these people need are water treatment facilities. I got to thinking about your generosity building schools in Africa and realized you could probably use your influence help with a project of this magnitude.
Of course I realize this isn’t a possiblity in many countries in Africa. There is so much violence and strife, any efforts would be thwarted. But Ghana has held proper elections since the early nineties. They have worked to rise above civil war and to make their country a safe place to live. Isn’t it time to help them along this journey by bringing them clean drinking water?
Our intentions are worthy. We send bags of grain, but they never arrive. We pull musicians together to sing about children and we buy the cd’s. Yet what these people really need is good, strong infrastructure to help them on the path to self-reliance. We have the expertise. We have the wealth. We should put it to good use. Oprah, you can help.
Random Thoughts on Everything and Nothing 
It’s a great idea. Also, it can easily be expanded to those who are middle-class or normal average “Joe’s”. Rudimentary water-treatment units are not that hard to build. They may not be the latest tech, and may just barely “clean” the water, but they’re definitely a start while bigger factories/facilities can be built, and buy time while upgrading the populace’s quality of life.
In fact many of these rudimentary units are the same make-shift ones that survivalists and nature buffs know how to easily make. If somehow, just a small group of people in these 3rd-World counties could be trained on how to make them, they can easily get up-n-running localized house-by-house units that can by time until infrastructure sized facilities can be built.