LIFEWATER CANADA
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Mission Statement
Lifewater Canada’s mission is to enable donors to bring hope and health by providing safe drinking water, hygiene education, and improved sanitation in Africa and Haiti.
About This Cause
Lifewater Canada achieves this mission by training and equipping people in sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti to drill new water wells, rehabilitate broken-down wells, replace or repair broken hand pumps, install rainwater catchment and storage systems, build community toilets, and provide hand-washing stations. Lifewater donors are partnered with communities to fund water projects that save the lives of children and their families because they no longer need to rely on stagnant ponds or dirty rivers. The projects also improve educational opportunities for children -- especially girls -- because they no longer need to spend hours every day carrying water back to their homes from the contaminated sources that are often kilometers away. Lifewater has been a registered Canadian Charity since 1997 after Jim Gehrels, then an Ontario government hydrogeologist, travelled to Africa and recognized the enormous and urgent need that many communities had for safe drinking water. He began making trips to Africa to drill wells, then back to Canada to raise funds for more wells. By the time Jim died in July 2020, Lifewater donors had enabled the charity to expand into several African countries as well as Haiti. By then, Charity Intelligence, which monitors the performance of more than 800 Canadian charities, had begun ranking Lifewater among the top 10 in terms of the impact it achieves on behalf of its donors. Lifewater has continued to be among the top 10 for SIX CONSECUTIVE YEARS now. It is also ranked as the most impactful charity in Canada that is focused on providing safe water. Lifewater recruits experienced volunteers -- well drillers, water quality specialists, mechanics, construction workers, inventory specialists, and more -- to go to Africa and Haiti at their own expense to train and empower local teams. The teams do the actual drilling and repair work -- funded by Lifewater on a project-by-project basis. Our reliance on volunteers -- and on only a handful of full-time and part-time staff in Canada who work from their own homes and overseas staff who are paid only after each project has been completed -- enables Lifewater to consistently keep its overhead costs under 10 per cent. The United Nations has stated that access to safe drinking water is a basic human right. But someone (usually a child) is dying every 30 seconds in the developing world because people there don't have access to safe drinking water or adequate hygiene. Contaminated drinking water is also a leading cause of disease and death for children under age 5. Water is a woman’s responsibility in much of the developing world, so a lack of safe, easily accessible drinking water creates immense hardship for women and girls who must spend hours of time and energy each day hauling water rather than focusing on economic or educational opportunities. A lack of water for hand-washing and other sanitation needs also sparks disease. In response to these concerns, Lifewater envisions a world where: - Children do not get sick and die because their water is polluted - Your gender does not limit your educational opportunities - Women and girls are not forced to walk for hours carrying heavy buckets of water - Girls no longer have to stay home from school when they menstruate because there is no place for them to toilet with dignity We also envision a world where the place you are born does not determine whether you live or die! During Lifewater Canada's most recently completed fiscal year, donors funded the: - drilling of 421 new wells - rehabilitation of 324 dormant wells - repair of 4,367 broken hand pumps - construction of 11 community toilets - installation of 26 hand-washing stations These projects benefited more than 2.2 million children and adults in Africa and Haiti. Our detailed monitoring of each community in which we complete a water project also tells us that during the most recently completed fiscal year: - An average 433 people benefited from each project - 672,529 hours were saved each day by children and adults (90 minutes per household) no longer needing to walk long distances for water - there were 3,698,106 additional HOURS per month that children were in school rather than fetching water - there were 462,263 additional DAYS per month that GIRLS were in school rather than fetching water - there was more than $10.6 million in total monthly economic impact from families no longer needing to buy water (estimated average water purchases per household multiplied by total households) and being able to spend the money on other needs. - there was a $5 economic return for each $1 invested by a donor (value of hours saved from walking to fetch water that can be applied to earning income, of hours saved that can be applied to attending school, of household savings from no longer buying water, etc.)