Drill Wells to Save Lives & Empower Women & Girls

2022 was another successful year! We are beginning to approach pre-pandemic levels of both fundraising and drilling and are optimistic that 2023 will continue that trend.

Last year, we raised over $550,000, funded 62 taps and one solar-powered mechanized water system for a health clinic, and impacted over 40,000 lives. We could not have accomplished any of that without your support, and we hope that you know how big an impact your generosity has on the people who live in villages where these wells are drilled. 

Thanks to your support, more girls are going to school and more women have had their time freed up to pursue income-generating work. Most importantly, waterborne diseases have been eliminated from the communities where we've drilled, and child mortality has been reduced by upwards of 70% thanks to access to safe water and improved sanitation and nutrition. In short, lives have been transformed.

Thank you, as always, for your compassion in action.

Due to the pandemic and security concerns, it has been several years since we have been able to visit Niger to visit the villages where we have drilled wells, watch wells that we've funded being drilled, and meet with out on-the-ground partners. We really value the time that we get to spend in the field and being unable to visit Niger has been a challenge. While things can certainly change in the coming months, we are hopeful that we may be able to plan a visit for early in 2023. If covid and security conditions allow, we are looking forward to bringing you more stories, images and video from Niger so you can see just how big an impact your generosity has had. In the meantime, we are so grateful for our partners who are hard at work drilling well and visiting the villages to assist the communities we serve with sanitation and hygiene training, well maintenance and more. 

Two weeks ago, we held our annual fundraiser and were thrilled to raise enough money to fund 25 additionaly wells, which will bring safe water and sanitation to more than 12,000 people. As we look to the end of the year and begin thinking about what's ahead, we remain so deeply grateful for your support. Attached are photos of a few of the wells that have been completed in the last quarter.

The ongoing pandemic and terror threats in Niger continue to present obstacles to our partner on the ground. Some regions of the country have become too high-risk for our water engineers to safely operate, so drilling plans have had to be adjusted. The good news is that, despite all of these challenges, drilling has not stopped. In fact, we have been able to reach some smaller villages that are best served by hand pump wells due to their smaller populations. So far this year, we have funded seven wells, which will transform the lives of roughly 3,500 people.

Attached, you can see a few photos of some of the some of the wells that you have helped to make possible.

Together, we made the best of another challenging year because you understood the critical nature of our work. At a time when safe water is more important than ever, we are so grateful for your support!

In 2021, with your help, we drilled 57 wells in rural villages in Niger. Of those, 33 were the traditional hand pump wells, and 24 were taps that are part of a larger, solar-powered mechanized water system. 

Each of those water points saved lives, enabled girls to go to school and freed women to pursue income-generating work to help support their families, and with your support, we will continue to deliver the life-saving gift of safe water to many more villages in Niger in 2022!

We have not yet received reports on the taps that we funded in the last quarter of 2022, so attached are a few more of the hand pump wells that we drilled earlier in the year.

As mentioned in our last report, we have begun the transtiion from hand pump wells to fully-mechanized, solar-powered wells. All future funds raised will go toward these new water systems, which make collecting clean, safe water a much less burdensome task for women and girls in the villages we serve. With this transition comes a slight increase in the cost of funding water for a whole village. Our cost for a hand pump well was $6,100, and the cost for a well tap is $6,300. Given the dramatic improvement in quality of life that a mechanized well offers, we think that's a great deal!

Attached, you can see a few photos of some of the final hand pump wells that you have helped to fund.