Marva Goldsmith did not set out to find a mission on Tasso Island. But once she arrived, she could not look away.
In 2020, Marva and her former business partner, Moorosi Mokuena, traveled to Sierra Leone’s historic Bunce Island, site of the largest British slave castle on the Rice Coast. Nearby sat Tasso Island, one of the Royal African Company's original slaving stations, established in 1663, before operations moved to Bunce Island.
When they arrived, they were greeted by hundreds of people from a community of roughly 5,500, living without reliable electricity, safe drinking water, or sanitation, with no internet connectivity and only one nurse and an assistant for the entire population
Yet what stayed with Marva was not only the hardship — it was the warmth, the dignity, the quiet resilience. Marva’s paternal family is from South Carolina, and standing on that shoreline, she sensed her ancestors had passed through Bunce or Tasso Island centuries before. “I wept”, she later reflected, “thinking about the cruelty inflicted here—and the remnants of that history still visible today.” She did not leave and forget.
Through her small company, Consult DSA, Marva and Moorosi funded solar installations for schools, places of worship, and the island’s health clinic — the first step toward a broader, community-driven vision for Tasso Island’s future.
The Origin Story
Fast forward to 2022. COVID had dried up profits, and her business partner was no longer with the company. But word travels fast when a mission is worth joining. Marva shared her “passion project” with one of Consult DSA's consultants, who told her mentor — and a small circle began to form around a simple idea: give back to a community that had lost so much. A Booz Allen Hamilton VP joined and invited a Baltimore-based entrepreneur who had spent the pandemic bringing internet access to communities cut off from the world. He introduced the team to Dr. Megan Weil Latshaw of Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
Since 2022, Dr. Weil Latshaw has woven Tasso Island into her Applied Practice Environmental Health coursework, turning class projects into real-world community support. That year, a press release about the work made its way across the Atlantic to Errol Reid, a Jamaican-born barrister in the United Kingdom. The Sierra Leonean descendant joined the mission and shared it with Abdulai Braima, Information Attaché for the Sierra Leone High Commission in the UK, who became an advisor. The group formally organized in 2024 as SierrAfrica Diaspora Connect (SADC), growing organically as one person shared the mission with another. Today the coalition numbers more than 40 people from the US, UK, and Nova Scotia, meeting weekly with a focus on sustainable infrastructure, heritage tourism, and economic development.
Within that broader framework, safe drinking water on Tasso Island emerged as one of the most urgent and solvable challenges. This is where LifeStraw became critical. What makes the Tasso Island initiative distinctive is not just what is being built, but how LifeStraw, SADC, JHU, and local leaders worked together. The introduction came through an unexpected chain of collaboration. One of Dr. Weil Latshaw's graduate students, Mark Poisler, joined the SADC team as part of a course at JHU, tasked with exploring safe water opportunities for the Tasso Island initiative.
Mark shepherded the project until leaving for medical school. He said, "Working alongside Dr. Weil Latshaw, SADC, and the LifeStraw team turned WASH classroom concepts into something real. In the Applied Practice Course/SADC internship, we shared the conditions on the island with LifeStraw, and they worked with us to match the right solution to the need. Safe water isn't a single fix; it's the whole chain, from source to sip, and the human factor around it. LifeStraw's purifiers address that chain directly, purifying the water and protecting how it's stored, and the team went to the island themselves to train the community.”
Both the CEO Alison Hill and Vito Castelgrande, part of the Tasso Island implementation team, are Bloomberg School alumni. Dr. Weil Latshaw added, “LifeStraw's leadership is a great example of putting public health training to work at a global scale. It is exactly what we hope students take from our degree programs.”
LifeStraw Escape High-Flow Pressurized Water Purifiers were recommended to address the following issues:
- The island's water was contaminated at the source (saltwater intrusion, iron-ore runoff from nearby Pepel), during collection, and at the point of use — making a point-of-use purifier the best intervention.
- Open defecation and free-range animals near the wells contaminate them with fecal matter. LifeStraw purifiers remove those pathogens at the point of use, making water safe to drink even from a compromised well.
- All 20 of the island's wells were in disrepair, none offering safe, managed drinking water. Past technology-only efforts left broken NGO pump wells behind; this project paired LifeStraw units with training and community ownership, so the solution is sustainable.
In a single installation, LifeStraw brought safe drinking water to 539 children, as pressurized water purifiers were installed across the island's five schools, delivering immediate access.
The purifiers treat water at the point where people drink it, removing bacteria, parasites, and viruses, and holding the treated water in a closed vessel so it stays safe until it is poured. On Tasso Island, that second function matters as much as the first. Water was picking up contamination during collection and storage, not only at the well.
Hardware on its own does not make water safe, and Tasso already had evidence of that. The LifeStraw team traveled to the island to do the installation alongside school staff, train teachers and students on daily use and cleaning, and set a maintenance routine for the schools. Each now has staff trained on the unit and a schedule for backwashing and inspection.
A Message from Tasso Island
“Safe water is the foundation of healthy minds and brighter futures. With the installation of LifeStraw water purifiers in our schools, our pupils and teachers can now drink safe, clean, and better-tasting water without fear of harmful bacteria and other disease-causing organisms.
Access to safe water will help protect the health of our children, improve school attendance, and allow pupils to concentrate more fully on their education. We are deeply grateful to LifeStraw, SierrAfrica Diaspora Connect, and the generous donors whose support made this lifesaving project possible.
Their kindness demonstrates that health and education go hand in hand.May the generosity of everyone involved continue to touch lives and create opportunities for communities in need.”
- Alhaji M.S. Kargbo, Head School Teacher, Tasso Island
For these children, safe water is not an abstract improvement — it means fewer sick days, better concentration in class, and reduced exposure to waterborne disease. For families, it is one less daily burden in an already resource-constrained environment. On an island with limited healthcare services, prevention is not optional; it is essential.
A Model Rooted in Partnership
The “last mile” installation of the LifeStraw purifiers was funded through an innovative model: SADC's 10-day heritage and legacy tour to Sierra Leone, March 7-16, 2027. Every tour deposit directly supports tangible improvements — water purification units, solar power, sanitation projects — on Tasso Island, turning remembrance into resilience and linking heritage tourism to development financing in one sustainable loop.
The LifeStraw installations are a vital milestone, but only one piece of a larger vision still unfolding. Work continues to expand safe water access, scale renewable energy, improve sanitation, and connect the island digitally to the wider world — each layer building toward resilience shaped by the Tasso Island community's own priorities. For Marva, this work remains deeply personal: what was once a point of departure in her family’s history has become a place of return, this time to invest, to partner, and to help build.
This is a story of alignment — local leadership, diaspora commitment, and partners like LifeStraw who understand that lasting impact happens when solutions are practical and participatory.
And on Tasso Island, that impact is already being felt—one classroom, one household, one future at a time.
Tasso Island is the kind of work we look for. Local leaders who know what the island needs, a diaspora coalition doing the slow organizing work, and a university program willing to put students on a real problem rather than a hypothetical one. LifeStraw supplied purifiers and training. SADC, Johns Hopkins, and the island's own leadership supplied the conditions that make purifiers last.
Five schools and 539 children is where this begins. There are roughly 5,000 people on Tasso beyond the school gates, and 20 wells still needing repair. We are working with SADC on what coverage looks like for households and the health clinic, and on the follow-up visits that tell us whether the units are holding up in daily use. That follow-up is the part of this work that rarely makes it into a story, and it is the part that determines whether the water is still safe in year three.
We are glad to be one partner among many here, and we plan to stay one.
The story of Tasso Island is still being written. Your participation as a traveler, donor, or partner helps shape what comes next. Visit www.sierrafricanetwork.com; to learn more, contribute, or join the March 2027 journey.
