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Warren Creates. (Etienne Ranger, OBJ)

The chilly cement on Warren Creates's porch made it uncomfortable to stand in light sneakers, but the water was still flowing through the filter sitting on the veranda.

It's an example of what sits in some villages of the Afar people, a mainly nomadic group in Africa who live in a large dust bowl region that encompasses Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, thanks to Mr. Creates's charitable organization, dubbed Can-Go Afar.

"People have their goatskin, they walk four or five kilometres, they get their water and they put it in here," says the immigration lawyer with Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall LLP, lifting the wooden top covering the filter and pouring in a jug of water.

Almost immediately, the water slips through an organic layer of soil and plant and comes out of a spout below.

Several of these low-tech but effective filters are now scattered around a few villages in the Afar region, which houses between 3 and 5 million Afar people.

The Can-Go Afar organization is a charity group, but like most, Mr. Creates runs it very much like a business. At the beginning of every fiscal year, he and the board of directors determine goals for the year – monies to be raised, events to be held, trips to be taken to Ethiopia.

So far, the two-year-old group has raised nearly $100,000 from local supporters and corporate donations – including at an event early last month – to build filters, provide emergency food relief and give out medical supplies.

The effort by Can-Go Afar is small, but Mr. Creates says he feels that helping a few will inevitably help the many.

"If you're dealing with education, it's going to have a multiplier effect, right away," says Mr. Creates. "Educated people are informed people, they're enlightened people, and they can help themselves."

Each low-tech water filter, originally designed by Albertan engineer David Manz, serves about 80 people. And once people are healthy, says Mr. Creates, that's when education can really take place.

"When they don't have cholera and typhoid and parasites in their intestines because of the water quality, they're able to learn, they're healthy, they're stronger, (and) they can look after themselves."

But Mr. Creates's cause is simply one of many business-centred charity groups in Ottawa reaching out to international locations. The Guatemala Stove Project, for example, works on delivering carbon-friendly stoves to Mayan villages in that country, reducing the amount of wood that women need to carry to cook their meals.

Jim Wallace, a former board member and an active volunteer in the group, recalls having a relatively easy time raising money when he first got involved in 1999. But as time progressed, he says, local donors became tapped out. So the group has reached out to other cities in Canada to find new funding.

"What we found over time, in our case, was you go through a phase at the beginning where it does grow fast; there's a lot of excitement around it," says Mr. Wallace, also an account manager at Agilent Technologies.

"But with purely volunteers, people run out of steam. I don't want to say 'burnout' because it's a little too strong, but people's enthusiasm fades a little and then they get interested in something else."

Mr. Creates adds he's careful to include the community in all decisions he makes. He's made two visits to the region so far, and says what surprised him the most was the self-sufficiency he encountered.

During his first visit, Mr. Creates says, one tribal elder gave him a few words of comfort: "He says, 'I don't want you to worry about us. We're going to be fine. What I want you to worry about is the people that you can't see.'"

Mr. Creates pauses. "And I thought I was here to help them," he jokes, with a laugh.

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PROFILE OF THE AFAR

Locations: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti (the Horn of Africa)

Population: Between 3 and 5 million

Nomadic population: Around 90%

Life expectancy: 45 years

Literacy: 6%

Religion: Islam

Challenges this group faces include a lack of education, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, female genital mutilation and difficulties visiting family in regions of Afar flung across country borders.

Source: Can-Go Afar