Water for All: pedal pumps and wells for families

Dear Donors,

We have some great news to share with you. On April 7, 113 volunteers decided to run the Milan Marathon with Aleimar, an exciting sporting event dedicated to solidarity. Through this initiative, we started a fundraising campaign that allowed us to receive support for the project Water for All, thanks to which for years we have been building wells in Malawi, saving the lives of thousands of children and families who are forced to drink contaminated water. Thanks to the precious aid of our runners, we will be able to build two wells to ensure drinking water for 2000 children and their families in the Mangochi District. However, our commitment doesn’t stop here! We will also distribute ten pedal pumps for irrigating fields, so the local community will produce the necessary crops to satisfy their food needs.

Currently, there are still many children in rural areas of Malawi who cannot access drinking water and who, consequently, risk suffering severe damage to their health. Cholera, hepatitis A and B, typhoid and polio are just some of the diseases that children risk contracting every day through the consumption of contaminated water. Furthermore, according to the World Food Programme, 4.4 million people in Malawi are in the most acute range of food insecurity: the price of corn has increased almost tenfold in less than a year. For these reasons, it is essential to build wells to have access to drinking water and guarantee pedal pumps to allow the local population to provide for their livelihood.

The usual monitoring trip to visit our projects in Malawi will take place at the end of October. This year, our representatives will be joined by a group of enthusiastic volunteers desiring to work for the children and communities of the Mangochi District. The volunteers have begun a training course through which they are learning more about Malawi, the needs we try to respond to and the activities that will see them involved. During the monitoring trip, wells will be inaugurated and pedal pumps will be distributed to the population. We look forward to sharing this special moment with you!

By donating your drop to our project, we can save the lives of thousands of children.

Dear Donors,

With this report, we would like to update you on our last monitoring trip to Malawi in November, during which our collaborator Tania went on-site to view the active projects in the area.

Almost a year after Cyclone Freddy devastated the country from an environmental point of view, causing a high number of victims and leaving many people without a roof to live under, the population is starting to take back control of their lives. The restoration of economic and agricultural activities is slowly progressing. During the monitoring trip, the construction of a house was inaugurated for a mother with her three children who had lost their previous home due to the cyclone. Although some first steps have been taken, in Malawi 40% of the population still cannot access drinking water, often there are no wells in the villages and the inhabitants are forced to walk for kilometers to reach rivers or rainwater collection points. The lack of water infrastructure affects the reduction of food security and the spread of contagious diseases.

Thanks to the project “Water For All”, we have been engaged for years in constructing wells and pedal pumps in the villages of the Mangochi district. During the trip, the functioning of these tools was monitored, which guaranteed children and their families access to drinking water and watering of the fields with positive results from an agricultural and food point of view. In fact, once having pumps, communities have access to water more safely and have the possibility of increasing their skills in the agricultural field, learning innovative and eco-sustainable agricultural techniques for the diversification of cultures following seasonality, reducing problems related to crop storage and increasing the ability to adapt to climate change and drought.

Your support is of fundamental importance for our project as you will help us identify the villages where the population does not have access to sources of clean water and carry out the hydrogeological analysis to identify the area where to install the wells and pedal pumps.

Thank you!