Ethiopia has finally stabilized, but 50 million people here still walk up to four hours per day to collect dirty water from open sources.
charity: water’s wells are saving lives with clean water and bringing opportunity to communities in need.
Our Water Programs Officer, Christy Scazzerro, flew out to Ethiopia for a week-long work session with our local partners A Glimmer of Hope and the Relief Society of Tigray. On a sunny Saturday, 20 people piled up into this conference room to brainstorm solutions to the many complexities and intricate details that go along with working in remote areas. The candy wrappers around Christy’s laptop let us know she was working hard.
Here’s a note from Christy:
Good afternoon from Mekelle!
You might be thinking — what can you possibly get done in a meeting with this many people?
In Ethiopia, decision making happens first through open dialogue, a lot of (healthy) arguing and then finally consensus. At REST, subordinates, supervisors and department heads have to be in agreement or we can’t move forward. This is why reps from Finance, Planning and Implementation are usually involved in every meeting. It’s also why we might stay on a single issue for a few hours – until we reach consensus up and down the line.
It’s been a productive week delving into new processes, reviewing operations and planning for 2012 and 2013.
Tomorrow we’ll drive to Rig #1 and sticker it up with campaigner names! Then a couple more days in the office before heading back to NYC.
See you all soon!
Today, our friends at TOMS asked everyone they knew to kick off their heels or sneakers to help spread awareness about millions of children who live without proper footwear every day. We’ve always supported TOMS’ work, and today is no different.
Remember when we launched our first-edition water project shoe with TOMS in spring of 2010? $5 from every sale of shoes went to fund a water project in Ethiopia. We sold out in weeks and raised enough money to fund an entire well for a community in rural Ethiopia called Sekura.
Late last year, the charity: water team visited Sekura Village… see the impact of your shoe purchase:
Learn more about our partnership with TOMS here >
In September 2011, we asked you to help fund charity: water’s first drilling rig to bring clean water to 40,000 new people every year in rural Ethiopia. More than 1,400 mycharity: water fundraisers and donors answered in a big way, raising more than $1.2 million for a brand new drilling rig fleet.
By now, you probably know we’re big on showing impact. From proving every completed water project with photos and GPS to sharing stories from people you’ve helped get clean water to drink — we want you to see how you’ve changed lives.
And today… we have exciting news! We were expecting to drill the first well with the new rig in May of this year. But Founder Scott Harrison was just in Ethiopia and… the first drilling rig arrived early!
Take a look at how your support is already helping bring life’s most basic need to people in Ethiopia:
We’re so grateful for your support of our work, our partners’ work, and our mission to end the water crisis. Thank you, September Campaign supporters! And stay tuned: as promised, we’re getting the GPS device set up in this rig soon so you can track its progress from village to village.
Today is International Women’s Day. We’re taking a minute to celebrate some of the women of this past year — specifically, some amazing daughters, mothers and grandmothers we met in November 2011 while traveling in the Amhara region of Ethiopia.
Almost a billion people in the world live without clean water. We call that the water crisis. And while we know many of these are men, the water crisis takes a significant toll on women of the world. Women are twice as likely as men to collect water for their families each day. Many in Sub-Saharan Africa walk up to four hours each day to get water that’s likely to make them sick when they get it home to drink.
Today, we hope you join us in recognizing the women of this world who bear this burden, who get up early or stay out dangerously late, who haul forty pounds of water weight in a Jerry can strapped to their backs… who strive for and hope for their children’s health, who put their families first. We’re lucky enough to have met some when we travel to the field. Their stories continue to shock us, inspire us and keep us working to bring clean water to every person on the planet.
Three months ago, we kicked off a campaign unlike any we’d ever done before. Through September Campaign 2011, we hoped to fund our first ever drilling rig so our partners could provide more water projects each year to communities in need. And in late November, with the help of more than 1,400 mycharity: water fundraisers…
Since the standard fundraising time period for a mycharity: water campaign is three months, there are still hundreds of fundraisers with open campaigns. Their efforts will continue to support our September Campaign until the day their campaigns close; 100% of what they’ll raise will go towards a second drilling rig.
From the start, one of our oldest supporters, Virginia Clay, pledged to match our September Campaign funds with an additional $1.2 million. Since we’ve reached our goal, our impact will be doubled!
Our mycharity: water fundraisers have been communicating to their donors that their hard-earned funds are going straight to the drilling rig — and we’re keeping that true by directing the additional funds they raise beyond our $1.2 million goal to purchase the second drilling rig. In turn, Virginia Clay’s match will cover the rest of that second rig, and then their remaining money will provide clean water projects for communities in Ethiopia.
We’ve been inspired by our September campaigners this year. From giving up their birthdays to coming up with new campaign ideas, our mycharity: water community was the driving force behind raising $1.2 million in three months. Here are a few fun campaigns we’re excited to share:
*We’re constantly keeping up with and getting inspired by our mycharity: water fundraisers. Check back with the blog each week when we feature a new fundraiser in our Campaign to Watch series.
We’ve purchased the FS 250 drilling rig and last week, it shipped to Ethiopia. The second rig is in production. Fraste has sent us a few updates and our staff has been giddily passing around photos of the progress — we’re pretty excited. Take a look at charity: water’s brand new FS 250!
We’ll mount a GPS device on the rig so you can watch it move from village to village, bringing clean drinking water to people in northern Ethiopia. The rig will be able to dig, on average, about 80 new wells per year. That means our partners can provide about 40,000 more people each and every year with access to life’s most basic need.
If you’re a September Campaign fundraiser or if you’ve signed up for our September Campaign updates, you’ll get an email from us early next year once we have the map up and tracking the
FS 250′s progress. Stay tuned!
Thanks to your support, your passion and your belief in our plan to scale our impact, September Campaign 2011 has been incredibly successful. We’re so grateful to have your help.
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