By Devlin Smith
At the beginning of September, two African Well Fund board members, Angela Martens and Rob Trigalet, traveled to Uganda to visit several project sites funded by AWF. While there, they met with representatives from Africare, AWF's partner organization in Africa, and met the people directly impacted by the wells being built in Uganda. Angela and Rob also posted blog updates and a cameraman documented the trip.
Now back from Uganda, Martens and Trigalet shared their experiences, including how it felt to see AWF's efforts put into action.
How did you first get involved with the African Well Fund?
AM: I have been involved with AWF since the very beginning. In October 2002 I read on a U2 fan message board a post made by fans who wanted to raise money to build a well in Africa. I joined the group and have been active in the AWF ever since.
RT: When I was 15, I saw U2 for the first time and I knew, or at least certainly felt strongly, that music could change the world. It certainly was changing me. Like many U2 fans I knew, I wrote letters for Amnesty International in an effort to give my belief in changing the world a tangible form. Fast forward to 1999 and Bono's involvement with the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which seemed to combine my passion for biblical justice and my desire to make a difference in the world, and so I became involved with Jubilee 2000. I started reading anything and everything about Africa and the issues of poverty.
In 2003,I can't even remember where I first read about it, I'm sure it was on a U2 fansite, AWF was promoting its first "Build A Well For Bono's Birthday" fundraiser and I was immediately struck by the simplicity and effectiveness of the idea that 100 or 200 people each putting in little bit of money, say $10 or $20, could build a well and completely change people's lives, so my wife and I donated money that first year.
What got your interested in the organization and its cause?
AM: Funding a well in Africa is something that's both practical and achievable. Building a well is something that can be both life changing and life saving. Clean water is essential for good health and can be as a new beginning for a whole community in Africa. For a group of people to get together and raise enough money for one clean water well is a realistic goal.
RT: Again, I think it was such a simple idea. I'd become very interested in Africa and, I think like a lot of people, I wanted to help but was overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems and I said to myself, "What could I possibly do to make a difference?" AWF provided me with a simple answer to that question.
When did you first start thinking about visiting Africa?
AM: Every couple of years the board of directors gets together with our partner, Africare. Three years ago, during our first meeting, Africare mentioned that a trip to Africa to visit the well sites we had funded was something that would be beneficial to us and we should really think about going if we got the chance.
RT: Since 2003, I slowly became more involved with AWF, speaking on the phone more and more frequently as time went by and one of things that come up fairly often was trying to get some of the AWF people over to visit some of the sites we had funded but it was a matter of coordinating schedules and finances, etc.
The night my wife and I were engaged in 1996, we made a list of places we wanted to visit in our lifetimes and Africa was on that list. Then, we were becoming more and more inspired as we read Bono's speeches about his work on behalf of Africa. Our first step to answer that question of "What could we do to make a difference in Africa?" was to sponsor a child in Ethiopia through a program called Compassion and that was in 2002. We began writing letters back and forth with our child, Desta. Then, I think it was January or February of this year, we started talking about the possibility of visiting him. Uganda was close enough to Ethiopia and Uganda was where AWF had funded several wells so one thing led to another and we ended up contacting Africare, which is the organization that actually oversees the construction of the wells, and the trip came together really quickly
When did the planning for this trip start?
AM: We started discussing the trip more seriously about a year and a half ago. Originally, we were hoping to have the trip take place earlier in the year, in the springtime, but that didn't pan out.
RT: January 2006.
How did you decide what countries and sites you'd visit?
AM: Africare facilitated the visit and chose the sites that would both be most beneficial for us to see and practical for Africare to arrange.
RT: There were several factors. My job is very season-specific so I only have certain windows of opportunity in the year where I can be away for long periods of time. Also, we were paying for the trip ourselves so we were limited by money as to how many places we could visit. So, with Uganda's close proximity to Ethiopia, it was the obvious choice. The actual sites we visited were selected by the Africare field office in Ntungamo District, which is actually the area where the money from the first AWF fundraiser was sent.
