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Clean water is the key

(to unlocking potential)

 

About one out of every eight people around the world have no access to clean, safe water. The water they have makes them sick. It robs people of dignity and hope.

 

How can it be that so many people are deprived of this basic human right, considering that, in Northern Malawi, we can enable villagers access to clean, safe water for life at a cost of one Euro each??

 

We know that when a well is installed in a village, girls return to school. Women have time and begin small businesses. People are no longer too sick to work. Gardens are watered and food supply becomes more reliable. Health is better and children grow up to achieve more.

 

The cycle of poverty is broken. Lives change forever

 

You see that clean water changes everything. But strangely having access to clean water isn’t an end, it’s a beginning, a whole new beginning.

 

Women come together in groups to learn, save and borrow in the group. They develop small business, have money to pay school fees, buy uniforms and medicines and do impossible things as if they were normal.

 

They get a life

 

Did you realize that a child dies every 15 seconds from a lack of clean water?

 

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can help to change that, by helping us to bring clean, safe drinking water to quarter of a million villagers in the next three years.

 

Dire poverty, disease, hunger, inequity… all lessen the quality of billions of individual lives. It may be a shock to learn that many of these major issues facing the world’s poor can be linked directly to a lack of clean water, even AIDS. Contaminated water makes you ill, weakening your immune system, thus making you more susceptible to the virus.

  • No Water

    Nearly 1 billion people worldwide don’t have safe water to drink.

  • Bad Water

    115 people die every hour from diseases linked to poor sanitation, poor hygiene and contaminated water.

  • Child Deaths

    1 in 5 children who die before age 5 worldwide, die of a water related disease.

  • Endless Work

    Girls often walk miles every day to collect dirty water to drink, miss education and the cycle continues.

  • Greatest Killer

    Water related illness kills more people each year than all wars and conflict

But, statistics only tell part of the story

 

This water story is all about people, every one person, and their potential to flourish and develop to their true potential. Lack of clean water is regularly their main obstacle and the solution is so simple that it’s hard to believe.

 

We work to unearth hope within all this despair. We try to Inspire, Educate and Challenge. We use their plans and walk beside them. This type of small financial-input approach is not easy. There are good days and bad ones. But in the long term, we believe that simple, low cost and long-lasting water projects change lives. Providing access to clean, safe water unlocks the potential of the communities we serve.

 

We have witnessed that when water comes, everything changes.

See all Pump Installations

all the WfZ Pump installations

Wells for Zoë – Water for Life

Clean Water Changes Everything

We are an Irish voluntary organisation, founded in 2005 and working mainly in Northern Malawi, focused on enabling the rural poor to access clean, safe, drinking water. Working with women’s self-help clusters, a package including preschools, adult education and conservation farming, this bottom-up approach has a sustainable and life changing impact on communities.

Just €10 gives a family clean water for life

Some Examples of what we do

New pump for well
Clean water stops the spread of cholera

 

The story begins with a woman, a grandmother, who traveled seventeen kilometers from her home to see Wells for Zoë, to ask their help for her village. When she had explained that 21 people in her village were suffering from Cholera, and the village urgently needed safe drinking water, William from Wells for Zoë worked through the weekend, organizing bricks, sand and manpower and a new water pump was installed on the Monday.

read more

Wells for Zoë co-founder John Coyne visited the area to examine the severity of the cholera outbreak. The chief Medical Officer of the regional hospital, told John that safe drinking water is extremely important in combating disease. As an example he gave the hospital’s outreach clinic in Doroba which had recorded a dramatic reduction in cholera cases following the introduction of clean, safe water supplies. In 2007 the area had experienced 143 cases of cholera and six people had died. Wells for Zoë installed three pumps in Doroba in 2007, and more in 2008 and 2009. In 2008 there were six cases of cholera in Doroba, none were fatal, while in the following year there were no documented cases of cholera in the region. The Medical Officer acknowledged that access to clean, safe drinking water is the cornerstone to safeguarding against disease.

 

“If people don’t have a protected source of water, drinking water supplies are easily contaminated and cholera and diarrhoea are the result”, he explained.

Aol Cause of the Day
Wells for Zoë 16 Pump Challenge

 

In honour of being featured as charity of the day on Aol.com on 16th March 2014 – WfZ undertook a challenge to install 16 new pumps in one day! this is what happened on the day:

This brought clean safe water to hundreds of people by the end of the day. Check out the map below showing the locations of the pumps that were installed during the day. Photos were added during the day as the wells were installed. Social Media played its part throughout the day on Twitter (@WellsforZoë #WaterforLife) and Facebook.

 

Sign-up for our newsletter was also popular on the day so a new audience could keep up to date with WfZ developments – lots of exiting stories on the farming and education side of what we do.

read more

As was our donate page which helps us continue this work – as always 100% of donations goes directly to our projects in Malawi with none going on administration. Just $10 would give a family clean water for life.

 

Wells for Zoë met the challenge and installed all 16 pumps on the day!

 

And as expected this had a huge impact on the hundreds of people that have clean safe water from 16th March 2014 on! John (founder of Wells for Zoë) says of the day:

 

Left the house before 7 am and returned 12 hours later. Tough day but well worth it. The crew were amazing and ran all day. I feel I have run two marathons as everything is up and down hills.