In honor of Bono's birthday, the African Well Fund is hosting its 12th annual Build-A-Well fundraiser through May 10 to increase access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation for more than 12,000 people living in Kwazna Sul Province in Angola. Learn about The African Well Fund's partnership with Africare from Africare's Rob Patterson, and be sure to support the campaign here!
Happy Birthday Bono!
My name is Rob Patterson, Deputy Director of International Programs at Africare. The African Well Fund and Africare have partnered to improve clean water access across Africa for more than 11 years now, and I've had the pleasure of directing Africare's implementation of African Well Fund-financed projects since July 2011.
Africare always emphasizes the importance of clean water access and sanitation (WASH), but since we work directly with communities to identify and help solve the challenges they face, our projects address a lot of different issues. This means that not only does the African Well Fund help save lives, the wells, WASH infrastructure and activities they finance also simultaneously empower African women, strengthen African agriculture and more.
Allow me to explain. Some projects are water-focused, like the WASH in Schools project where African Well Fund support helped rehabilitate boreholes and construct rainwater harvesting systems in schools in Malawi and Tanzania. In other projects, African Well Fund wells and latrines are integrated with other initiatives. In our women's empowerment program in Chad, where Africare trains women in business skills and microfinance, African Well Fund wells provide hundreds of women with clean water for their businesses and families, and women's co-operatives also use the wells to procure drinking water for restaurants they operate. In Ghana a few years ago, an Africare health project helped farmers reduce malaria with prevention education and gardening skills for better nutrition. African Well Fund wells helped provide clean water for thousands of these Ghanaian farming families, keeping people healthy, keeping children in school and keeping farmers in their fields, where they earn their living.
Water is life. You can't live without it, and you can't grow without it. THANK YOU to all African Well Fund supporters for helping save lives and helping Africa grow for more than a decade. The generosity of you and the African Well Fund Board have improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Africans across 15 countries, and if any of you African Well Fund supporters out there are as dedicated as your board members, you are in special company.
-Rob Patterson
Africare Deputy Director of International Programs
[A guest post by the great Rob Patterson at Africare. You can see his original post (and visit Africare!) over here.]
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