A Global Crisis

Water is essential to life. It’s a basic human necessity. Yet, almost 1 in 9 people on the planet right now still don’t have access to safe water.

844 million people are currently forced to use dirty, bacteria-infested water that makes them sick and robs them of their time, dignity, health, right to education, and the opportunity to live an abundant life. More than 840,000 are estimated to die each year from diarrhea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene. For many children, it’s a death sentence.

Imagine

being a mother in a remote village where there is no access to clean water sources anywhere. All you have is a dirty stagnant stream a few hours away, being shared by livestock to cook, drink and use for your daily activities. You have no other option but to go with your eldest daughter every morning, along with a 40lbs yellow jerry can, to fetch just enough water for your family each day.

Instead of being in school, your daughter walks for hours in the blistering sun, at great risk to her safety, carrying a water jug that weighs almost as much as she does. The worst part is that the water she brings home is dirty and contaminated, with all kinds of bugs that constantly make you and your family sick.

Where you come from, children in your village die every month from waterborne illnesses. Your local witch doctor promises to heal you but nothing is happening.

You feel hopeless with this injustice and witness those around you engaging in destructive behaviours. This physical, social and spiritual brokenness makes you long for hope and a better future.

Because you are spending time collecting water and battling illness, you are unable to generate income to support your family.

This isn’t your story. This is the story of millions of women and children (especially young girls) around the world. Can you imagine this as your daily reality?

Help us bring justice to this reality.

Give Water. Give Life.

Life with & Without Water

The transformation is truly holistic when a community gains access to safe water for the first time. For many villages, this access marks a new beginning, provides hope for the future and serves as a major milestone in their shared story.

Time

Without

Women and girls around the world spend 200 million hours every day collecting water.

With

Women are now able to care for their families, work, or even start a business. Young girls can attend school and play with other children.

Safety

Without

Women and girls exposed to dangers and vulnerable to exploitation while traveling long distances to fetch water.

With

Stay close to home and no longer vulnerable to being exploited.

Education

Without

1 in 3 schools lacks access to basic water and sanitation. For children getting water or being sick from drinking dirty water, theirs school attendance is significantly affected.

With

More kids able to attend school with less absences due to illness.

Health

Without

Every two minutes a child dies from a water-related disease. Each day, nearly 1,000 children die due to preventable water and sanitation-related diarrheal diseases. More than two million people die every year from diarrhoeal diseases. Poor hygiene and unsafe water are responsible for nearly 90 per cent of these deaths and mostly affect children.

With

Dramatic reduction in sickness.

Nutrition

Without

Frequent diarrhea causes children to not properly absorb nutrients from food, leading to chronic malnutrition.

With

Healthier children are able to grow strong and vibrant.

Economy

Without

Lost economic opportunities from time spent collecting water and battling illness instead of generating income.

With

When water comes from improved and more accessible sources, people spend less time and effort physically collecting it, meaning they can be productive in other ways such as income-generating activities.

Hope

Without

Villagers remain broken in their relationships and with issues of the heart.

With

Villagers understand God’s unconditional love for them.

Give the gift of time, safety, health, education, freedom, and life.

Give Water. Give Life.

Hopeful Solutions

This is a global crisis that affects all of us.

In fact, “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” is the Sustainable Development Goal 6 established by the United Nations.

It’s a matter of having the resources to access it and responsibly manage it. There are sustainable, cost-effective solutions to the water crisis and we have the expertise, 15+ year history and vision to bring it to millions more people, but we can’t do it without your help.

Since the beginning, generous partners from all over the world have

  • Provided

    3,411
    deep-capped water wells

  • Provided

    3,411,000
    people with access to safe water


  • Trained

    282,713
    people in hygiene and sanitation practices


  • Trained

    44,677
    people in community health training

  • Helped

    193,682
    people decided to follow Jesus

  • Helped

    47,720
    people learn the basics of their new faith

  • Planted

    1,190
    new churches


For $13.00, you can give a person access to clean water and the Living Water.

Give Water. Give Life.

GLOBAL INTERACTIVE MAP

Since we have GPS coordinates for each water well, here is a visual footprint of the clean water access points.

Each water point represents more than just a water well. Our desire is to every area in a person’s life impacted, which means we have several other activities that take place in the community. Here is a summary of those activities in the current countries we are working in.


Water A Bridge to Community Development

Water is a foundation for human development. Starting with safe water paves the way for holistic sustainable community development.

Here’s the approach of our integrated WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) program.

Dreaming Bigger

We dream of a world where human flourishing is restored and where water poverty is eradicated through the power of the gospel.

By 2030, our vision is to provide 10 million people with access to safe water in 10 different countries. At the same time, 5,000 local churches will engaged as the centre for community development.

We believe it’s possible to see a world where physical, spiritual, social and economic brokenness is restored.

Will you join us in making this dream a reality?

Give Water. Give Life.

FAQ

Ask away! If you don’t see an answer to your question below, shoot us a message and we’d love to get back to you with an answer.

Contact Us

What is next after my donation?

Upon donation, you will receive a confirmation of your giving within the month.

For donations for $5,000 or above, we will connect your donation to a specific village that needs a well and we will send you a well assignment report, telling you of all the details of the village. You will receive this within four months after your donation date.

For any donations of $13,000 (donation of one full well), we will create an online donor page with the videos of your well, GPS coordinates of the well, the sights and sounds of the actual village that your well is located and any interviews of villagers that were conducted at our well visit. This process could take any time from 8-15 months.

What is included in my report?

Upon donation of a well, a ‘well assignment report’ will be sent to you listing all the facts and details on the well and the village that you have an impact. These facts include GPS coordinates, well statistics like depth, flow rate, type of pump being used, village facts like demographics, population and community activities like sanitation and hygiene and borehole committee training sessions. It also includes a map showing where the village is in relation to the rest of the country.

What am I paying for when I sponsor a water project?

The $13,000 covers

  • the cost of the construction of one deep-capped water well, which includes salaries for our drill and pump installation crew, construction materials like pumps, casings, cement for the concrete pad, our regular machine maintenance costs, fuel for moving our machines to the site, and periodic water quality testing like total dissolve solids, nitrite/ nitrate content, bacteria and pH testing.
  • our programs for the water committee and hygiene and sanitation training
  • working with the local church to train leaders, show the JESUS Film and follow up with new believers
Why could it take up to 15 months to get my video?

While we want to report to our donors as fast as possible, we also want to make sure that the well and all the auxiliary programs work. The amount of time is critical for us to ensure that our sustainability components are in place and allowing time for the training to take place. Our regular site visits takes a bit of time to complete. Sometimes when it’s raining season, roads are just not accessible, so we have to wait until the drier season to go to the village to visit. Because it is highly tailored to the donor, the production time is needed.

(Note: this is an average time frame and this report is only for those that gave to a full well.)

Can I pick the country where my money goes?

You may give your preference of one of the countries that the WFLI works in, however, if you do not have a preference, the funds will be given to the project that is needed the most. In an unlikely event where your donation has to be re allocated due to unpredictable circumstances, we will contact you to let you know of the situation.

Do I get to decide where the well will be?

Since we work closely with local governments in many countries to determine where we should best deploy our crew there and the fact that we have local staff there that access the situation to determine where best to put the next water access point, donors are unable to pick where the well is actually provided.

What can go wrong?

There are a number of factors that can come into play. Although not frequent, we do encounter some areas where we have dry wells or wells that is producing water with high salinity, in that case, we will try our best to find another location close to the village.

The areas that we work are often far away from the city, especially during the rainy seasons, our crew may have a harder time to reach to the particular location. There are also rare occasions of machine failure which may delay the pace of providing a well.

After the well is provided, there are a few occasions where a pump or pipe will break, due to normal wear and tear. In which case, the borehole committee of that village will notify our regional repair team to come for repair. 

We are committed to give you not just a water well, but a working one. We will try our best to resolve the problems that might prevent villages to have clean water.

How do you address the issue of sustainability of these wells?

Our long-term presence and commitment to the countries that we are operating in ensures that we have ongoing contacts and follow-ups to check and see whether these wells are working properly.

The water committee concept is a good example of empowering the local villagers so that they know how to keep the well.

Each committee charges a small fee (often they are a few cents) per use/per bucket to enable the village to repair a broken well, because they have the means for repair.

We have also trained and equipped regional repair teams who are from the village with tools and knowledge to repair broken wells, and they could service other areas.

We use reliable and robust technologies in our drilling and pump so that one can get the materials for the parts for repair in country and not rely on imports.

What are some of your learnings over the 10+ years?

The Benin and Togo Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Project commenced on March 29, 2016
with the completion date of September 30, 2020. The project is a collaboration between Global Aid Network Canada (GAiN) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC), and contributes to the reduction of maternal and child mortality in the targeted regions of Benin and Togo. The project has positively impacted 250,329 villagers (80.9% being women and children) by providing a clean water source to 281 communities in Benin and Togo. The ultimate outcome set for this project is a 10% reduction of stunting in children under five years of age. A concentric health clinic model was implemented, which involved the delivery of multiple complementary interventions such as providing safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) resources, village and clinic level training, equipping village champions, and community social marketing campaigns. The focus of this initiative is that pregnant women, newborns and children under 5 will have improved utilization of essential health services, and increased absorption and consumption of nutritious foods.

Throughout the project, the teams were able to streamline and improve data collection
methodologies so that managers could provide more oversight to their teams and track results.
Additionally, improvements were made to water quality tests based on learnings in Year Four. Continuous staff development was an important aspect to project management and implementation. The project benefited from having competent managers and board members who were able to effectively implement all the project objectives and who demonstrated excellent leadership adding to the success of the project. The gender-balanced boards of directors and data collection teams ensured that issues affecting women were adequately addressed in the project activities, and that the objectives focused on development that worked for the whole population.

Financial management concerning budgeting, procurement and allocation of resources provided
more opportunities for learning as it pertained to the handwashing stations, clinic worker trainings and the community social marketing. In addition, better management of inventory for supplies to better mitigate production and procurement delays were key learnings to be implemented in future projects.

The project design was successful in its impact on communities. However, some design aspects
could be adjusted for future projects, such as putting more resources into the recognition and training of champions to encourage their leadership and involvement. Some of the community trainings were also identified as being too long for a single sitting, and the local partners recommended having multiple, shorter training sessions over a longer period of time as a better mode of delivery.

The design of the gender sensitivity forums proved to be an effective way to facilitate community
ownership of community-specific gender issues. The combination of the same-gender discussion forums, larger group discussions and activities discussing the distribution of household activities, childcare, vocational activities, and access and control of resources created opportunities for important dialogue. The importance of contextualization also became apparent, as certain topics such as gender roles and gender-based violence appeared to be sensitive subject matter.

What is your Theory of Change for the Water for Life Initiative?

Stories

Read about the impact you’ve had in transforming lives – physically, spiritually and emotionally by providing access to clean water.

Give the gift of health, time, education, safety, freedom, and life

We dream of a world where water poverty is eradicated through the power of the gospel and human flourishing is restored. Will you join us?

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