Follow up from Charity Water

[pegkerr]

For those of you who were around when I celebrated my fiftieth birthday, you may remember I did a campaign to raise money for Charity:Water (with your help, I raised approximately $2000, which was 2/5 of what's needed to install a well). Charity:Water promised to report back to let me know exactly how my money would be used in eighteen months. I have received the following message from them:

Hi Peg,

By now you’ve heard from us about Dollars to Projects, and that we’re sending you proof of the water projects you funded through mycharity: water. It’s been about 15 months since we sent your money to the field, and you’ve been so patient.

We need just a little more time.

We’re sorry to say it, but we need some more time to report on the individual water projects that you helped to fund. Your projects were due this December, but things are moving a bit slower than expected. We plan to send your Dollars to Projects data in mid-2012 so you can see how every dollar you raised helped fund projects for people in need.

For now, we’d like to share some info about the country, region, and partner putting your funds to work in the field:

Your funds were pooled with those of other mycharity: water campaigns to help thousands of people in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. Our local partner, Relief Society of Tigray (REST), is using this money to build or rehabilitate dozens of hand-dug and drilled wells, as well as spring protections, in more than 100 communities.





Learn more about these water technologies here.

Right now, REST is finishing up construction, providing hygiene education to communities and creating Water Committees to oversee the projects. Then, they’re collecting the final GPS coordinates and photos from each project, which you’ll see in your final report.

We’re excited to post your Dollars to Projects data next year. We hope you're excited, too!

What's the hold up?

We work in remote areas of Ethiopia -- some are more like pastoral communities than formalized towns. Field teams working in these areas have few resources. They plan as best they can, but small obstacles can become big hurdles when teams don’t have a way to buy or replace simple equipment (such as a gasket in a vehicle).

Ethiopia’s weather and lack of infrastructure also pose challenges. A long rainy season can delay work by months. Heavy rains can wash out roads that weren’t well-constructed or maintained to begin with. Few roads in Tigray are paved at all.

When each group of projects has been finished, our partners make a separate trip to gather and verify the proof (GPS, photos, etc.). Then, they send these reports to us using the only Internet available, which is pretty slow and unreliable. Sometimes, it takes a few extra weeks for us to receive the final project data.

How we’re preparing for the future.

There’s another big challenge specific to our program in Ethiopia. It’s possibly the biggest of all, but fortunately, we’re already doing something about it!

REST owns three drilling rigs that can each drill a new freshwater well about every five days. Right now, their teams of highly skilled technicians are operating all three rigs at capacity. Even then, we have so many wells to drill that some projects will be delayed as we wait for the rig’s availability.

We know we need to go faster. That’s why now, during this year’s September Campaign, we’re funding a new drilling rig for our partner in Ethiopia. This will increase their capacity and our ability to help more people each year get clean drinking water. Learn more about September Campaign here

Get the details about how we’re building capacity in Ethiopia on our blog here.

And learn more about REST, our local partner in northern Ethiopia (they're building your projects as we speak!) here.