1) The mission of One Million Wells is to empower others with the technology and training to drill water for themselves, who then can pass that knowledge to others – and grow exponentially the number of water wells drilled.
OMW describes itself as a “radical” charity that is willing to share its technology to provide water access to people around the world. Its success is measured “through innovation, implementation and impact”. And yes, its goal is to get 1,000,000 wells drilled around the world, which would be life-altering for billions of people.
Innovation: OMW has a patented technology and a cost-effective method for drilling wells. The methodology, and the inventor of this patented drill, R.C. Crawford, has created a drill that is cheap to build with materials gotten in-country, and he continues to work on enhancements to it.
Implementation: After building and testing the drilling technique in 2015, OMW began drilling wells in 2016.
To date, OMW has drilled over 368 water wells in 11 countries, generating over 1,000,000 gallons of water.
Take a look at these photos to see that, while the drill may look rudimentary, it’s proven itself over and over (with almost NO fail rate, including wells drilled since 2016).
2) “Clean Water Changes Everything.” The mission of charity:water is to work globally (29 countries so far) to help implement community-owned water projects.
Local partners on the ground help facilitate comprehensive water, sanitation and hygiene programming to protect everyone’s long-term health. Working with these partners doesn’t stop when construction ends. charity:water continues to monitor, evaluate and maintain the water points to ensure sustainability for years to come.
To help frame the issue, charity:water states that nearly 1 in 10 people worldwide live without clean water. That is twice the population of the U.S. And the majority of these people live in isolated rural areas and spend hours every day walking to collect water for their families. Not only does walking for water keep children out of school or take up time that parents could be using to work and make money, but often the water carried home makes the family sick. But, “access to clean water means education, income and health – especially for women and kids,” according to charity:water:
· Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war
· Clean water helps keep kids in school, especially girls
· In Africa alone, women spend 40 billion hours/year walking for water, taking away time to grow food, and earn an income
· Women are responsible for 72% of the water collected in Sub-Saharan Africa
Since charity:water was founded in 2006, it has been chasing “one ambitious goal: ending the global water crisis”. Tackling issues like this crisis needs audacious plans (and hopes!). charity:water believes, that “if we all work together”, everyone will have access to life’s most basic need within our lifetime”. Since 2006, charity:water has funded 91,414 water projects, with 14,762,215 people having gotten access to clean safe water.
Planning:
Our local partners select water point locations based on a variety of factors like geography, assessment of need, community participation and long-term sustainability.
Implementation:
In addition to the construction process, local partners spend months establishing community buy-in, promoting safe hygiene practices and building water committee capacity to manage projects.
Post-Implementation
To ensure that water continues to flow for years to come, charity:water empowers local leaders, use strong operations and maintenance structures, collects data on specific WASH indicators and implements innovative sensor technology.
