The lack of clean drinking water is a huge problem in developing countries. More people die every year from dirty water than all forms of violence combined. Providing clean drinking water is a crucial aspect of providing basic needs for those living in poverty, and it is also an extremely complicated issue. This issue has a huge impact on street kids as well. Many times, families must force their children to walk long distances everyday in the search for clean water. Carrying heavy jugs of water, children spend a large part of their day traveling to and from a water source. This prevents the child from being able to attend school, or have any kind of normal childhood at all. It is also not uncommon for families to only have the capacity to care for a limited amount of children, forcing some of the children into the towns to fend for themselves

For the past six weeks, Until Then has had a team in Kenya researching this issue and developing a program to help provide clean water to impoverished areas. Using a new drilling technique created in Bolivia, we are now able to provide clean drinking water for a fraction of the cost of a standard well. This new technique is extremely simple, and only costs about $1,000 to build the drilling equipment (compared to a drilling rig which can cost up to $500,000), and each well will cost only about $1500.

While in Kenya, the Until Then team was able to train 3 Kenyan men in this new technique of drilling. The Kenyan team, Barnabus, Jeycob, and Franco, all have a vast experience drilling for water all over Africa using a large rig (the expensive kind). After the company they worked for lost their drilling rig because of economic problems, the team was left without jobs. At this same time, the Until Then team was able to meet them and share the idea of the new drilling technique. At first the team was hesitant, but after training them for over a month on this new technique, they were sold.

Using their years of experience and knowledge of the area, this team was able to further develop the drilling technique, making it even better and more efficient. The team is now working on drilling their second well.

Partnering with the company FreeWaters, a footwear company that is committed to using part of their profits to provide clean drinking water to people in developing countries, we are able to provide jobs for Barnabus, Jeycob, and Franco, using this new technique, as well as being able to hire 10 street kids to help with manual labour on each well.

We are excited to see this program grow so that we can provide clean drinking water to people around the world, as well as supporting local economies and helping street kids.

To support this project, please donate to Until Then, or order a pair FreeWaters sandals (available Feb 2010).

Thanks

Phil

 

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