The Basics

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by Christine Eusebio

{source: Nasa Goddard Photo and Video}


The ever-increasing presence of the internet in the day-to-day lives of people all around the world gives us the sense that our massive globe is not so big after all. However, even as our knowledge of the world expands, our physical existence is necessarily limited, and we can really only see the world through the prism of our own experiences.



The more we learn about ourselves, the more we realize how dependent we have become on the internet and technology. Checking emails is as much a part of our morning routine as brushing our teeth. Without our gadgets, we feel naked — like something is missing.


{source: blaircook}


With this intense focus on technology and connection, and with all of the convenience of our modern society, it is easy to forget that our actual, primitive needs are really very few. While we worry about the hustle and bustle of our daily schedule, while we panic about misplaced smartphones, the people of Niger worry about how they will get what we have in abundance: safe, clean water.



We are just minutes (even seconds) away from our water coolers at work and the filters on our faucets at home, so it easy to understand why access to water something that most Americans never worry about. The situation is quite different in West Africa. The women and girls of Niger have to walk many miles to get water, water that is often contaminated. As a result, they have time for little else, education is an unlikely dream, and 87% of Nigerien women are illiterate.



When a well is drilled, women’s time is suddenly free to pursue other productive activities like farming and raising livestock. These activities allow the women to earn money and provide for their families, an example which creates a positive, healthy atmosphere for their children, especially their daughters.

{photo by Gil Garcetti}


Support our cause. Don't let your compassion well run dry. Fill it with water.

Reducing Death and Disease with Safe Water

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by Kristin Allen

My entire house is a germ-ridden nightmare. Both my 11-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son have the miserable stomach flu that is terrorizing everyone. It is not pretty here right now, to say the least. I am pumping them both full of liquids to keep them hydrated, and I am washing my hands about every 45 seconds, to try to keep myself from getting sick. It is no fun, but it made me think about the time I spent in Niger, West Africa, in January 2012. The trip broadened my understanding as to how having water – safe water – is essential to staying healthy, and how and, believe it or not, WHY people die when it is lacking.

{photo by Gil Garcetti}

The one thing I didn’t understand prior to my trip, is that when there is no safe water source in a village, the people do not die of the type of dehydration that is depicted in movies: lost in the desert with no water at all. Instead, what happens is that the villagers find a water source – however, contaminated – and use it to “survive”. Women and girls walk hours and miles a day to disgusting, disease-ridden water holes. One time, I saw a water hole that was simply a pit dug deep enough into the earth that water would simply seep in. The water that was pulled out was brown from the mud and other debris in the hole. At some point during the day, all of the water would be taken out, and there would be no water to be had until more seeped back in – typically the next day. Another time, I witnessed women fetching water from a small lake. It seemed like a better alternative, until I saw the livestock that were defecating and urinating into it as they drank from it themselves.

{photo by Gil Garcetti}

When water is such a scarce commodity, it takes women and girls hours a day to carry it back to the village, that it is used for one thing only: consumption. But consumption is a double-edged sword. Frequently, the contamination in the water causes terrible intestinal problems and diarrhea that then leads to severe dehydration. How can you possibly combat dehydration from diarrhea, when the only thing you can drink is the poison that caused it in the first place? This is why diarrhea is the second leading cause of death in children under 5 years of age in Niger.

What about prevention of disease? When there is no safe water source in a village, the water is too precious to use for hygiene. It is second nature for me to wash and rewash my hands to try to prevent the flu from knocking me down, but this simple habit of hygiene is not an option for villagers in Niger who do not have a safe water source. However, once a village has a safe water source, the villagers can start to learn about the importance of hand-washing to eliminate and reduce illness and infection. Simply washing hands can cut the risk of diarrhea up to 50 percent.

{photo by Gil Garcetti}

Trachoma, the leading cause of preventable blindness, is spread from person to person. It is a huge problem in Niger. Trachoma is caused by bacteria, and one of the best ways to prevent it is by washing your face and hands – an impossibility when water is scarce. However, a village with safe water has the “luxury” of using water for hygiene. Diseases can be virtually eliminated by the villagers, simply because they are able to wash their faces and hands.

{photo by Barbara Goldberg}

Safe water creates an avalanche of benefits: Girls can go to school and avoid the permanent, crippling deformity and injury that results from the weight of water carried on their heads. Trachoma can be virtually eliminated in a village; and diarrhea doesn’t have to be so deadly. All of this from one, simple well.

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Hadiara Diallo’s Story

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In Niger, West Africa, where I was born, the morning ritual for women and girls in rural villages begins before dawn by grabbing a container or bucket, and heading for the nearest water source. Bathing and laundry are done by the pond after the water supply quota has been met for the day.

This backbreaking job is what girls throughout Africa face as their destiny. It is the shackle that prevents them from being educated and empowered.

I was very fortunate to be born in the Niamey, the capital of Niger, and was thus spared much of the hard work suffered by my cousins living in rural villages. During summer breaks I visited my maternal grandmother in the region of Tera.

At a young age, I was struck by the dismal difference between the fate of my maternal cousins and that of my paternal ones. Access to clean water and education was the stark difference.

One family lived by the river Niger with a plentiful supply of safe water while my cousins had to walk about two miles to the nearest unsafe pond.

My female cousins were too busy helping my aunts with the daily chores, so they were denied a chance at an education and typically married as a pre-teen-11, 12 or 13 years of age. Isn't that hard to imagine?

Working with Wells Bring Hope as Director of Microfinance has given me the opportunity to directly help the women in my country by giving them the tools they need to help their families and impact their lives for generations to come.

When women no longer have to walk miles to get water, their time is freed up to work productively and earn money. Wherever we drill a well, we educate women to start their own small businesses. By providing microfinance education and later, microloans to women, as we do, we are offering long term, sustainable solutions.

Hadiara Diallo
Director of Microfinance

Sustaining Today’s Wells Beyond Tomorrow: Part 2 Technical Capacity

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by Nick Baldry

I have a broken faucet. It’s the one in my front yard, used for hooking up the hose when I want to try and fight the California sun and keep my lawn green. Considering the importance of water to people in underserved communities around the world, it’s kind of embarrassing to admit that while they struggle to find clean water, I happily pour the stuff on the ground for the sake of improving the aesthetic appearance of my front yard.

Or at least I used to because, as I said, that faucet is broken and, as I’m not the most technically minded individual, it will probably stay in that state of disrepair. For me, this represents the mildest of mild inconveniences. If that faucet were my only source of clean water, it would be a different story. It would be life threatening.

As Wells Bring Hope’s wells are the only source of clean water in the communities we serve, a malfunction like the one my outdoor faucet suffered is life threatening. Diseases such as cholera, diarrhea and bilharzia become real threats to the health of people who don’t have access to clean water. That is why ensuring the sustainability of a well is a vital part of our intervention, and one key component of that process is making certain that the technology used in our hand pumps is appropriate to the area in which they are used.

This blog has already highlighted the consequences for the WASH sector when this principle is ignored. Cindy L. Kurland’s excellent case study of PlayPumps International (which can be found here if you haven’t already read it) highlights how an attention-grabbing project that drew funding from the U.S. government, the Case Foundation, and a number of celebrities began as a nonprofit marketing dream but quickly became a technical nightmare.

The notion was that the local children would play on a merry-go-round, which would generate the energy needed to draw water up from an underground well. Sounds like a great idea, right? Unfortunately, PlayPumps International failed to consider a few major flaws in their design.

· To meet PlayPumps’ stated targets, each pump would need to be in constant motion for 27 hours a day. Obviously, this creates an insurmountable problem.

· During periods of high demand for water, such as early morning and late evening, there were often too few children playing to meet the demand, and during inclement weather, there was no guarantee that children would want to play at all. This begins to make the PlayPump model look less like a fun solution to a serious problem and more like child labor.

· Due to the technical complexity of the PlayPump system, a malfunction would be nearly impossible for villagers to fix on their own. It cannot be overstated that a malfunctioning pump in a rural community creates a life-threatening problem.

Well’s Bring Hope’s drilling partner, World Vision, has over twenty years of experience installing hand pumps. This simpler design has a twofold benefit. First, it is less likely to break down at all. Secondly, if it does malfunction, it is much easier to bring back into service with the limited resources available in rural villages.

Another essential component of a technical sustainability program is ensuring that local residents have the skills required for resolving any problems related to a malfunctioning pump. According to the GLASS report for 2012, only 27 out of 69 responding countries reported that they had sufficient staff numbers to support their existing drinking-water systems. This means that even simple problems can lead to a well being out of service for prolonged periods of time or even abandoned completely.

When villagers are given ownership of their well and are given the resources and skills to resolve any issues that come up, the likelihood that the well will continue functioning over the long term are dramatically increased. Out of the 180 wells we have funded since 2008, all 180 are still functioning.

{souce: Gil Garcetti}

Our aim is that the wells we install in partnership with World Vision will remain functioning beyond their advertised lifespan. Making sure that the technology is simple and reliable and that the villagers have the technical capabilities needed to resolve any issues that do arise are huge steps toward achieving that long-term sustainability goal.

My inability to fix my broken faucet will, at worst, result in the withering of my lawn, and maybe a few angry neighbors, but when residents of a village in rural Africa cannot ensure that safe water will be provided, the consequences can be life-threatening.

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Wells Bring Hope Holiday Party

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On December 2, 2012, Wells Bring Hope Founder and President Barbara Goldberg once again opened her home to WBH supporters and volunteers for some holiday cheer and a celebration of a another successful year.

WBH Vice President Gil Garcetti announced that the organization has funded 180 wells since its inception in 2008. That's over 100,000 lives transformed by clean water!

The party was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with old friends and meet new ones.

Barbara used the party as an opportunity to announce the launch of Wells Bring Hope's new online store. Her granddaughter Lia was an obliging model of one of the WBH items available for sale in the new store!

Giving Tuesday

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With Black Friday, Small Business, and Cyber Monday, it's easy to forget that the real joy of the season is found in the giving! Kick of the holiday season today by making a donation to Wells Bring Hope on this first national day of giving.

Water: Here and There

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by Kristin Allen

Out of curiosity the other day, I asked a number of people to describe their basic life needs. I got a variety of answers: food, housing, the internet, their cell phone, HBO, and a daily Starbucks non-fat/half-caf/soy caramel latte. Not a single person mentioned “water.” To most of us, water is a “given.”

To be fair, before I became involved with Wells Bring Hope, I didn’t understand or appreciate how desperate the situation was, and how many people were living without clean, safe drinking water. You turned on the tap and water came out. Right?

Water is so abundant to us, that the water in the tap is frequently not even good enough. We want water that has added vitamins, or electrolytes, or comes from a special tropical island. In fact, I just came across one company selling bottled water (at $21 dollars for a case of 12 bottles!) designed to “stimulate your soul” by being “infused with Universal Energy.” Wow.

Water is almost a gimmick in the United States. However, in Niger, water is literally life……and frequently means death. 68% of Niger’s rural population has no access to clean, safe water.

I traveled to Niger in January 2012 with Wells Bring Hope. We visited a village without clean, safe water. We traveled to their local water source, which was a grimy, muddy hole where women and children stood for hours in line to pull up a bucket of polluted, filthy water for their families….if they were lucky.

Many stood for hours, only to learn that the water had dried up and they had to go home empty handed. The villagers knew that the water they were feeding their babies and children was dangerous, even deadly. 1 in 7 infants and children in Niger die before the age of 5 as a result of contaminated water. Many women we spoke with had lost a child, or multiple children, to water-related diseases…..that was their fate, they believed.

I often speak passionately to individuals and groups about the needs of the people of Niger, and I have been asked “Why do they stay if there is no water?” It seems like such an innocent question, but there is nothing more complex. It is like asking someone who lives in a crime-ridden neighborhood riddled with gang violence, why don’t they move, as if it were that simple. But where would they go? It takes resources to move. It takes a place to move to – room for an entire village. Unfortunately, not only is moving NOT an option, but Niger is being inundated with refugees from neighboring Mali who are fleeing from the violence of Al Qaeda. This is putting a strain on the already incredibly limited resources of the world’s second poorest country.

The only way to really address the problem is to help get clean, safe water to the villages through the drilling of borehole wells. I saw it happen. It was absolutely thrilling to watch the reactions of the people when a well drilled to 250-300 feet into the ground yielded life-saving water.

The village literally exploded with excitement. The people knew that it meant life, and the start of truly being able to live. They danced and reveled in the water as it shot up from the ground and rained down on them like liquid gold. I couldn’t help but join them in their dance of joy. I knew that my life had changed too, and that I would never, ever look at the water that flowed out of my tap in the same way again.

Schools Support Wells Bring Hope – L.A. High

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by Rosario Lopez

I became a member of the Water Circle at my school, Los Angeles High, last year and gained great interest in the Interact Club that started it. I was introduced to it by our former club president, Dennis Ojogho. After engaging in the mission of the club, I became so passionate and excited to organize events to fundraise for our mission. I clearly remember the water walk we had last year. It was such a great experience, and I was so happy to know that all my peers helped out and participated. After Dennis graduated, I was privileged to take the position as President of the Water Circle.

As this year – my senior year, kicks off, our group is growing, and we have already had a successfully fundraiser. On Friday, October 5th, our school celebrated Hispanic Heritage month by hosting a club day event during lunch. The Water Circle signed up and we sold a Latin dessert (flan), Mexican candy bags, and refreshing pineapple juice. It was so much fun, and with the help of other members of the club, Ruben Amaya, Alan Bresnahan, Richard Dowdle and others, we raised more than $100. I am thrilled to continue the rest of the year with rewarding events and fundraisers, and I promise to do my job as the President of the Water Circle at L.A. High. Some upcoming activities will be held during our homecoming game on Friday October 26th, and we will also be fundraising at the Larchmont fair on Sunday October 28th.