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The efforts of the Holmen Rotary Club will mean clean, safe drinking water for hundreds — maybe even thousands — of people in a poor section of Lima, Peru.

Last winter, the club, which is only about a year old, decided to take on its first international project. Dean McHugh, chairman of the club’s international committee, went online looking for causes that would work and came across a proposed project from a Rotary Club in Lima that sought help getting water filters to an extremely poor section of the city of 10 million.

“It’s basically a shanty town,” McHugh said of the Lurigancho and Chosica districts where the help was sought. “People living in huts made out of corrugated metal.”

McHugh, whose wife is from Peru, had visited the country several times, and the Rotary Club contact in Lima, Carlos Rioja, had worked for many years for Oshkosh Truck, so he had connections to Wisconsin. So the project was a good match.

The project entailed created and distributing 250 biosand water filters, which can filter almost 10 gallons of water per hour. Getting access to safe drinking water is a big deal to a lot of people in the world. Almost a quarter of the world’s population lacks potable water, and in Lima, 10 percent of the residents (a million people) don’t have safe drinking water.

Almost half of the children in Lima younger than 5 suffer from chronic diarrhea contracted from contaminated drinking water, and a third of Lima’s children have intestinal parasites from bad water.

Helping provide clean water is one of Rotary International’s top causes, along with fighting hunger and polio, McHugh said. “Clean water is one of the high priorities because of the impact it has on infant mortality in the world,” he said.

The biosand filters offer a relatively simple and affordable solution, McHugh said. The first layer of the filter, which has a case constructed of concrete, contains biological agents meant to consume harmful bacteria. A thick layer of fine sand further filters the water.

The filters are mainly meant for households, but they also can be used for schools, orphanages and other institutions.

The Holmen Rotary Club raised $7,100 locally though a Green Bay Packers ticket raffle. “The community really responded,” McHugh said.

The $7,100 was matched by the Rotary District and with additional grants from the Rotary Foundation, the money available for the project ballooned to $25,000.

“It’s amazing what you can do in Peru with $25,000,” McHugh said.

The money will be sent soon to Peru, where a company has been contracted to create the filters. McHugh hopes to visit Peru in December or January to see the results of the project.

The club is considering doing another water filter project next year, on top of the local projects it does, which include taking part in Rotary Lights and providing Holmen’s holiday street lighting. McHugh said the club is looking at doing some kind of project related to renovation of Halfway Creek Park, the first phase of which begins after Kornfest.

“We’ve got a great group of people,” he said. “It’s an aggressive club.”