Clean Water for Africa - wells, filters, pollution reduction

Eight years ago Teela and I started fundraising for the Yoto Riverkeeper in Togo, in the hopes that we’d raise enough money to build one $12,000 drinking water well for a small village a few hours north of the

capital of Lomé. We made our goal with over 50 donations, and set sights on doing the same thing the following years. In the last eight years we have raised over $100,000, all of which has been sent to our Riverkeeper friends in Togo, on Lake Kyogo in Uganda and on Lake Victoria in Kenya.

With that money we have funded the building of four wells in Togo,

four wells in Uganda, two water tank projects in schools, installed over 150 water filters and water sampling for pollution. The impact is impossible to put into words as these projects are providing live saving clean water for thousands. It sounds like a sales pitch, but your donation is literally saving lives, because these children and families are currently being sickened by drinking dirty water.

Why Clean Water?

For places with little to no access to clean drinking water you can imagine the impact this had had on these communities. People that were walking miles to dip plastic containers in dirty streams, can now pump clean drinking water within minutes. In many communities in Togo, Uganda, and Kenya where we work, disease from dirty water kills more people every year than all forms of violence. Almost half of those deaths are children under five years old. On our trips to the villages where we work it is heartbreaking to spot the young kids with water borne disease, as they have very swollen bellies from the worms and amoeba that are contracted from drinking dirty water. Women do most of the water collecting in the villages, so when a community gets a source of clean drinking water, it allows women and girls to the opportunity to improve their lives by attending school, grow food, and earn an income.

Why Togo, Uganda and Kenya?

Our Riverkeeper partners in these countries are amazing. They live in these communities and have firsthand knowledge of the problems facing their community and their waterways as well as the on the ground knowledge to implement well building and water testing. The projects we fund are 100% guided and implemented by the Riverkeepers in these countries.

How will the money be used?

100% of the donations will be used to fund drinking water wells and clean water projects. Our current fundraising goal is $40,000. We are

now partnering with Wine to Water to provide water filters for homes, schools and health care facilities. For only $10 you can provide a drinking water filters to families that are currently drinking contaminated water. This filter will last for 10 years and will be maintained by the families and the local riverkeepers in Togo, Uganda and Kenya.

Additional donations will help fund a well near the Nile River. Currently people are fetching dirty water from the river and recently several people have been attacked by crocodiles while trying to get water for their families.

Donations will also fund water filters and the implementation of those filters in rural Uganda and Kenya. We hope to install at least 50 water filters in schools and health centers. The filters are an affordable solution for places that have a source of water, but they source is contaminated.

Finally we are expanding our work to Senegal to help cleanup Hann Bay. The Riverkeeper there has been working for decades to stop sewage and trash and we are going to help him remove all of the trash from the grossly polluted beaches, frequented by kids and fishermen.

Visit Clean Water for Africa for more information about our work.