W.A.T.E.R! … Wells And Toilets Everyone’s Right!
Have you ever wondered how they build these wells? What an incredible process! Please see these short videos to get the picture.
W.A.T.E.R! Build a Well for $330Wells have a powerful impact on an extended family for generations. Imagine washing your dishes or laundering your clothes from a hole in the ground that is without a cover, allowing ground water to carry debris and pathogens into your well, let alone using that water to drink and cook. Clear clean water helps move a family to a new standard of prosperity in their health, and also their wealth, because irrigation becomes a reasonable task. Plus, a fresh kind of happiness is generated because of the gratitude they feel when they see your name on the lid. Each time they draw water from the well, knowing that someone unknown in a far-off place cares about them, their heart is renewed with hope. This may seem like an abstract benefit, but it is tangible and palpable. Due to the depth needed now to find water, it costs more in bricks, cement and time for the builder, and so the cost has increased over the last few years. Each family helps with digging, and we also now add whatever is needed to get to water. More than one person can contribute to building one well, thus creating a team-built well by putting together smaller amounts. All names of the team will be on the top. Thank you so much for anything you can do!
W.A.T.E.R! – Well REPAIRWells can crack due to earthquakes or other inclement weather. With little effort we can repair these wells and restore the family’s ability to have clear, clean and abundant water. Even if one has enough firewood to boil their water for consumption, having enough water radically impacts crop production. Getting a well back online is important. Wells can be deepened with $120. Any amount helps!
For the last several years, clean water for everyone has become our main priority. Although toilet, huts, and fuel-efficient stoves are all very important components influencing the health of villagers, clean water has the largest impact on all activities of all members of the family. One might wonder if a toilet wouldn’t be a bad idea, and yes, if there was more funding available, by all means!
With funding being directed to specific solutions, we have to ask what is the most important. What if we were living in the bush? If you don’t have a toilet, you can use the bush, right? But, if a family doesn’t have a “good” well, then they only have a hole in the ground to retrieve water to drink, wash and irrigate. That hole is unprotected from the elements, ground water, air borne pathogens, etc. So, we have opted to build as many wells as possible, and until more funding becomes available, people without toilets continue to use the bush as they have for thousands of years.
As of 2025, we have built 172 wells. In reality, we have built 183 since 11 had collapsed, and we rebuilt those wells from the general fund. In 2025, we deepened 24 wells due to the drought, bringing the total of deepened wells to 119 (72 in 2020 and 23 in 2024). Another type of necessary repair is the well top, and in 2025 we repaired 32.
Here is a sampling of families in front of their well. Taking pictures like this has proved to be extremely labor intensive and impractical, but we continue to do this, both to share with you how your money has an impact, but also to show regulating agencies that we indeed spend our money as intended. Here are a few of our challenges:
- People live far apart in the bush and some don’t even have a good road to their home, so much has to be done on foot.
- Finding people at home when we show up is another issue, because residents can be out in the field, etc.
- The person who paints the well doesn’t have a quality picture-taking phone.
In addition to clicking on the dots, you can use the arrows on the left and right of the pictures to move through the images.
The Importance of Water in Daily Life
Think about all the ways good, clean and accessible water can change one’s life:
- Drinking pure water affects our health. Pulling it up with a bucket is the least expensive approach to providing residents of the households with a consistent supply. “Bore holes” are drilled with large equipment, inserting a pipe into the ground, giving the best option for the purest water, but they are quite expensive. Bore holes can now be built without pipes that have a greasy residue, which not only tastes poor but also makes laundering a much larger and somewhat impossible task. That has historically been the experience with most existing bore holes in the area. Village residents prefer our wells to how long they would have to wait to get a bore hole, primarily due to cost. We do gratefully continue to make headway with water availability!
- Washing a wound with clean water is a far superior method of first aid.
- Water that doesn’t require boiling to purify means that less wood is being used, thereby reducing the impact on a depleting supply of fuel wood.
- SODIS is a wonderful method of sterilizing water with sun (see www.sodis.ch). Even though some days have cloud cover preventing adequate purification, we still count on this to support cleaning the water. As we learned in our 2019 visit, the moringa seeds, native to the area, can be used to remove turbidity. SODIS has been a highly successful program for us to transition until we create another sterilizing technique.
- A “good” well has a cover that prevents rain water from washing dirt, composting debris and other infectious bacteria into the well.
- When a well is dug for the family, it normally will be deep enough to provide irrigation water for the growing season. This water depth then greatly impacts the prosperity of the gardening, both potentially financially, and also nutritionally for the family. The entire community benefits! During our visits we most often need to visit the city to buy produce, which doesn’t make sense in an agrarian community, but its due to a lack of water, not know-how or hard work!
- When women wash clothes with water from a hand dug well it will often be so high in particulate matter that the clothes can’t come clean. Often women are trying to wash clothes without soap due to economic hardships, so using dirty water certainly adds further burden to the daily chores.
- The same applies to washing dishes: the most sanitary approach includes using clean water, helping to reduce the spread of water borne disease.
Our latest survey indicates that 62% of the families in Nhimbe for Progress now have wells…so, we are making progress! Granted, this survey is not recent (2023), but it is giving us insight into the terrain we are looking to improve. Thank you for your help with this!
BUILD A WELL TODAY!
Contributing to building a family a well has an enormous effect on many lives. The well commonly lasts for generations and is used by the extended family, which includes many relatives who may live at the home.
Please indicate above in the donation box how many wells you would be able to build or otherwise contribute toward. We are able to combine donations of any amounts and create a team approach to build the family’s well.
Our goal is to send you a picture of the well your money built. Your family name (or the team of family names) is painted on their well, and every day, when they draw their water, they are reminded that someone in America cares! To those of you who haven’t seen the photo of your well, we appreciate your patience. Unfortunately, it is complicated due to the terrain and availability of a phone (camera) when the well is painted. If you would like more information about this process to better understand the nuances of life in rural Zimbabwe, please feel free to reach out by phone, and we’ll be happy to answer questions! Thank you for the ongoing support!