Water Wells

It’s hard to believe in our modern times there are people groups who still have no clean and accessible water…but it’s true.

At Water Wells for Africa (WWFA), we’ve actively worked to change that since 1996 installing over 500 wells by 2024 and we’re still going.

Healthier People: Everywhere we’ve installed wells that provide fresh clean water, killer waterborne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea have all but disappeared.

Reliable Equipment: Our pumps are built-to-last and easy to maintain. In each village we help, a group of 10 people form a Community-Based Maintenance team whose purpose is to learn how to repair the equipment and oversee the village’s use of it. Many of our pumps have already lasted more than 20 years.

Less People Per Well:  Every new well we install gives healthy and easy-to-access water to about 500 people. From an equipment perspective, each pump could technically serve more people (and many do), but we intentionally keep numbers at sustainable levels to ensure the longevity of the equipment and to protect local water tables.

Time and Safety for Females: Another important reason we keep the ratio of people to wells at about 500-to-1 is the the amount of time it takes girls and women to trek from home to the well and back for water collection. On average females spend more than an hour per trip and usually have to wait in line at the water source. This not only uses up valuable time that could be spent on family, education, or businesses, it can also mean longer journeys that can be dangerous.

The closer the WWFA water wells are to smaller groups of people, the less time is spent getting to the water and more of their lives can be spent on other productive activities.

We invite you to walk through the process with us of how we build water wells, from A to Z!