The water project at the Butere Girls High School in Kakamega, Kenya has been completed. It will serve over 1,200 students and 120 staff members.

Our implementing partner wrote of the dedication ceremony… (edited for clarity)

“The handing over ceremony at Butere Girls school was very colorful as you can see from the photos. We did the handing over while Board of Governors had a meeting in school.

The Anglican priest read from the book of Exodus 1:13 about the importance of water to human life.

The Head-mistress thanked Bridge Water Project for the water supply in the school. She was very grateful that now the students will be clean and they will concentrate on studies and she expects that the results will improve. She said that she expects the relationship between Bridge and the school to continue.

One student also thanked us for the water and promised that their standards (grades) will improve since they now have water available at their school. They will try hard in their studies to excel.

The District Officer of Butere thanked Bridge Water that the water given to the school is a gift of life to the students and the entire school fraternity and the community. He encouraged the students that hard work and discipline in their education is an investment in their future. The entire community of Butere were very thankful to the donors of The Water Project for what wonderful work they are doing to save the lives of millions of people by providing safe drinking water.”

Kidz GIG, accepted an ambitious challenge. Inspired by the Water Project (www.thewaterproject.org), 330 kids and close to 200 leaders, agreed to drink only water for 5 days and collect the savings to build a well in Africa. We set a considerable goal of $6,000, enough to build a complete well, and believed that God was going to accomplish this through the hearts of our children.

Such a lofty goal needed to be attacked from all sides. We took advantage of the terrific resources provided by www.thewaterproject.org: bracelets, pictures, and videos. Additionally, we created a Donation Destination that featured those resources and a sign with Matthew 25:35 “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.”  We also put that verse on water bottles and sold them for $10 each.  Likewise, we created cups for children to collect the money they saved.

We knew that our challenge needed to speak to the head and the heart, so Monday’s lesson was from Matthew 5:41, and asked kids, “what in the world are you doing above and beyond.” We had no idea, however, just how far above and beyond these kids were willing to go. God’s word seized their hearts and the Spirit prompted them to live it out, not because we told them to, but because they wanted to. Kids came to camp on the second day with not only money from their water drinking sacrifice, but with money that they earned selling lemonade and going door to door in their neighborhood.  One child purchased the water bottle, encouraged her dad to take it to work and ended up selling 10.  Entire families got engaged and set up water stations in their driveways and sold tap water.  A four year old made brownies and sold them at her swim class.  Children would not even put milk on their cereal! One child told his dad how upset he was at the “waste of water” in the decorative water fountain across from our church.  The energy built as we asked “what in the world are you doing to help the rejected (Luke 10: 30-37) and “what in the world are you doing to put others first” (John 13:1-7).

By the fourth day, an anonymous donor offered to match the donations for the final day.  As God would have it, the lesson for that morning was from Matthew 6:1-4 and asked, “what in the world are you doing that only God knows.” God used that person to model true service to the kids and to demonstrate how He uses regular people to serve His purposes.  By the end of our last day, the children and families had collected $6,055, the donor match was $3,000 for a total of $9,055!!!!!  Glory to God!

Our implementing partner reported from the ceremony…(unedited)

“Bridge Water Project officers arrived on Sunday and it was good to have the Sunday service with the Christians of St. James ACK Enanga who came in large numbers to receive their new well officially from BWP.

The Padre of the church described the well as living water that was given by Jesus Christ, as he quotes from the bible in the book of John 4:13 and there will be no thirsty, no water borne diseases to anybody who will take this water, he further said that may God bless The Water Project abundantly for them to continue blessing the needy with clean safe water all over the w world.

One of the church members who is in charge of Church Development committee described the well as a source of income to the church members, that they are going to use water from this new water source to sprinkle their crops during dry seasons and from this they will be able to raise funds to start their own small scale businesses. He also said that this new well is going to save time to the community members for them to concentrate on other activities since they will no longer walk miles away wasting time looking for dirty water. All church members were very thankful to The Water Project for providing clean water to millions of people in the world.”

Toronto 5K Run

We want to send out a HUGE thank you to Catalina Urtoi who organized a 5K Run on May 20th in Toronto, Canada to benefit The Water Project.  Together they raised $1,000 to help fund a well.

5k runs are an especially powerful way to show support as so often, moms and children walk upwards of the same distance every day, just to find water in developing communities.

Thanks to the Toronto runners, one community in Africa will no longer have to!

This local, grass roots organization cares for orphans and helps place children in local foster homes.  This well project serves the resident orphans, the foster families and the surrounding community.

Our local implementing partner reported…(unedited)

“It was another beautiful day as we arrived at Ark of Orphans offices with the Orphans of Ark looking happy and anxious to be handed over clean and safe drinking water. One could tell as the parents, guardians and community members came in large numbers to witness the handover of the new well.

There was one Orphan child of Ark who gave a testimony describing the new well as their only savior. She said that they have been suffering from water related diseases i.e typhoid as a result of  taking turbid, muddy water, she also added that they had difficult time to concentrate on their daily activities i.e reading, singing in class instead there were forced to walk miles away looking for dirty water now she believes that this will never happen again with this new well near them. On behalf of  the Orphans of Ark she expressed thanks to The Water Project through Bridge Water Project for caring the lives of Orphans by providing them with safe clean water.

A testimony from the Director of Ark of Orphans who described the new well as a source of income to the Ark members since they will utilize this new well to start other new projects i.e brick making, crop growing and dairy farming in turn which will help to raise funds for other basic needs I,e food, clothes and education to Orphans of Ark. On behalf of staff and Board members of Ark he was very thankful to The Water Project through Bridge Water Project for remembering those people who are in need of clean water.”

Our implementing partner reported the following from the handing over ceremony. (unedited)

“It was a happy and joyous moment to people of Masingo slum when the Bridge water staff went for a handing over. We were received with their traditional songs like ‘KANO AMAUA KANDATOLA KHUNJIRA’ meaning the flowers I got on my way.

On reaching the ceremonial place, happy faces of the aged mothers and fathers together with the young men and women and their children were waiting to hear the good news from us. We had no otherwise but to declare and let them take full maintenance and operation costs of the water system.

During the ceremony, everyone from the community wanted to say thank you for what they said was a miracle in their life. A grandmother aged 85 years and who has a swollen stomach for over 10 years said that her stomach was swollen because of drinking water from the sewage. But the interesting part of her story was that for the shortest period she has used the clean water, the swollen stomach is now reducing. The old mother said that was her golden chance to have clean water since she was born. Another lady said, “Since I begun using the clean water, the problems of itching, stomach ache and severe headache have stopped.

One man stood and said that, “We are now clean and we look like other human beings, GOD came inside you people and brought life to us.”

After the testimonies, we went towards the water system and we found that the community had begun growing vegetables as a result of the water system. Also a local bathroom had been built as a source of income for maintenance and operation of the water system. The community members pay 20 shillings per house hold per month.”

Columbus Signature Academy is a new project/technology based school in Columbus, Indiana.  Our curriculum is powered by student driven projects and the 21^st Century skills of technology.  So our students determine what we will be working on, and teachers guide the process.

Our Well Project began when Olivia Linnemann, one of the students in my class, shared about her family’s project to help build a well in Ethiopia.  Her family had adopted triplet babies from Ethiopia and decided that they wanted to help those people in Africa who needed clean water.  When Olivia shared this with the class during our morning meeting, Molly Dye, one of my other students, raised her hand and asked, “Could we help drill a well?  The whole class immediately jumped on board and became excited about helping other students like them far across the globe.  The idea that they, as 2^nd graders, could help save lives, gave true meaning to project based learning.

We then  asked Olivia and her mom, Amy Linnemann, to present the project idea to Rhonda Brill’s 2^nd grade class, since we work on most of our projects together. They were equally excited.  Students were alarmed to discover that kids, just like them, couldn’t go to school because they had to walk all day searching for water for their families to drink. And worse yet, sometimes, children would die from drinking that water. We all sat down together and made a list of the ways we could learn about the project and raise the money to drill a well for a school in Africa.

We spent a semester of school working toward our goal to raise $4500 to fund an entire well for a school.  All parts of our curriculum were integrated into the project.  Students opened and operated a mobile school store, selling school supplies and snacks before school and during Passions time, when students work on personal projects of their choice.  The store taught us many important math skills as we added and subtracted totals every day to see how far we had come.  We learned about money, pricing, profit, and giving back change.

We wrote letters and made phone calls to businesses and famous people asking for donations or any other help they could give. We studied the countries in Africa, researching, writing reports and giving PowerPoint presentations.

The Well Project became our Science Project as well, as we made our own water filtration systems and aquifers. We presented our African Well Project to the Columbus community at the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation Science Fair selling wristbands and collecting donations.

We covered Health standards as we learned all about the health hazards of drinking polluted water.  We sold Flowergrams, donated by Gilberts Flower Shop, on Valentines Day to students, parents, and staff.

A 2^nd Grade Bazaar was planned with the help of our Art teacher, Tonya Cruiser.  Students sold handmade crafts created during Art class. We also made a recipe book of students’ favorite recipes and sold them to friends and family.

In a earlier project our 2^nd graders had made a movie about the Titanic passengers.  We decided to sell DVDs of the movie and add the profits to the Well Project funds.

When we had just one week left on our project timeline, it seemed we would fall short of our project goal. That was when Olivia presented the project to the New Hope Christian Church, which her family attends. Olivia could hardly contain her excitement that Monday after the presentation.  She came into the classroom jumping and yelling, “We reached our goal!  We reached our goal!!!  Everyone cheered!

The next Thursday, Amy Linnemann brought in the checks and cash from the church members. She also brought in her own check she had promised to our class for obtaining and charting 595 points for learning things about Africa and water throughout the project.  Each point was worth $1.  A newspaper reporter was there as the 2^nd Grade classes, with great anticipation, totaled up the columns in our final math problem of the project.  Students and teachers cheered and clapped, jumping to their feet as the total appeared $5078.50.  After paying off some debts for purchases, we were able to donate a total of $5000.

We had succeeded.  We would be able to drill a well for a school in Africa, saving lives and changing the world for not only those in Africa, but those who were fortunate enough to be a part of this rewarding, life changing project.  Thanks to The Water Project for what you do!

The following are pictures of the handing-over ceremony.