

Doko Midija
215 people
Project Completed
August 31, 2019
“Glory to God, our prayer for clean water has been heard.” - Buzunesh
Doko Midija, Ethiopia, Africa
- Story
- Plan
- FAQ's
Clean Water, New Life: Buzunesh’s Story
August 2020
A new corrugated roof rests atop Buzunesh’s home, and the structure is framed by coffee and false banana plants in a picture of cleanliness and prosperity. Just a year ago, this image was only in Buzunesh’s prayers.
Today, the family has safe drinking water a few minutes from their home, a thriving farm, and healthy children who are able to go to school.
“Glory to God, our prayer for clean water has been heard,” Buzunesh said.
Buzunesh lives in Doko Midija village with her husband, Lema, and their seven children. For years, Buzunesh and her daughters walked for two hours a day to fetch water from a faraway community. It was hardly enough water to survive. Plus, the walks were dangerous. Many women and girls were attacked.
Today, the new water well is three minutes from their home. Instead of walking for water, Buzunesh’s daughters can go to school.
“I never thought that I could reach high school,” Buzunesh’s daughter, Lanke, said, who is now in 9th grade. “I used to arrive at school late and miss classes while helping my mother transport water, and I didn’t have time to study at home.”
Today, Lanke and her sisters can study, learn, and become the people they dream of becoming.
“Now, we think not about survival, but growth,” Buzunesh said.
Since saving time and money, the family has been able to invest in their farm. In addition to sending their children to school, Buzunesh and her husband built a new, more permanent home with the saved income. It brings them great joy.
“We are committed to protecting the water point and using it properly because we have tasted life without clean water,” Buzunesh said.
With safe water and sanitation practices, families like Buzunesh’s are transformed. You can be a part of a transformation story. Sponsor a water project today, and follow along to see your impact.
Life in Doko Midija: Bizunesh’s Story
Bizunesh and her husband have seven hungry mouths to feed, seven thirsty children who they must provide for. There is much to be done and no time to waste.
For nine months out of the year, Bizunesh walks 2 hours on foot to a nearby village to gather water for her family.
Not only does Bizunesh lose valuable work time to gather water, but she must brave the journey alone, one that could expose her to attacks from men.
During the rainiest time of the year, she and her daughters gather water from a pond in Doko Midija village. When that dries up, Bizunesh goes back to her long walk.
“We share the water with our domestic animals and when they step in it they bring a lot of diseases to the water,” she said. “Praise be to God that we are alive and continue to pray for the well in our village.”
Last time Bizunesh contracted giardia, a waterborne parasite, she was in bed for a week, and her children missed three days of school. In rural Ethiopia, women are expected to care for the children, and while she was in bed, her children suffered.
It’s for her family’s future that she prays for safe water.
“We have started building a corrugated iron roof house, but high expenses at the clinic have hindered it,” she said.
You can help Doko Midija village today. Your gift will provide health training for each household, plus a new, safe water source near their village.
Lasting change means more than just building a well. Local Lifewater staff will work house by house to teach healthy habits and share the love of Christ with everyone. Safe water allows families the time, physical health, and saved income to invest in their futures.
Doko Midija is in a very remote region of Ethiopia
View Interactive Map
This village is on its way to becoming a Healthy Village. The process takes approximately 24 months from start to finish. You can follow along with the progress below.
Here’s the Plan for Doko Midija:

Project Ready
Villages are carefully selected by Lifewater staff and wait for program work to begin in their area.
CLTS
In Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), each village goes through exercises that reveal how their current practices are making them sick, such as identifying all the places where feces are contaminating their environment. This important step equips communities to be knowledgeable about their health and willing to make changes.


Healthy Homes Registered
A home is certified healthy when a family has adopted five healthy habits: washing hands with soap and water, storing and using water safely, building and using a bathroom with a roof and door, using a drying rack to keep dishes off the ground, and keeping the area around the home safe and clean.
ODF
When each household builds and uses their own functioning restroom, a community earns an “Open Defecation Free” (ODF) certification. Each country has their own processes and celebration for ODF villages, and it’s a huge accomplishment towards improved health for everyone.


Water Committee Selected
Doko Midija has selected water committee members to manage the safe village water source. Forming a water committee is a key step toward establishing a safe water source in a village. Committees are made up of local men and women who manage the well and collect fees, ensuring the community’s investment lasts for generations to come.
Construction Started
Work is officially underway to build a new water source for Doko Midija village. Our local teams are using technology appropriate to the region and geography to ensure the new water source is sustainable.


Village Has Safe Water Source
The new safe water source is now complete!
Clean, safe water transforms a village. Everyone gathers to celebrate, thanking God for the miracle in their community.
Healthy Village
Great news! Doko Midija is now a certified Healthy Village. That means the safe water source is complete and more than 90% of the community’s homes are healthy. That is a new future for 215 children and families.

Water Project FAQs
When you sponsor a water project, you are helping bring lasting change. Your gift provides:
- House-to-house hygiene and sanitation education
- Custom engineered water source
- Construction of a safe water source
- Community engagement by Lifewater field staff to ensure change lasts
Lifewater also provides:
- Monitoring and evaluation of the project with real-time updates to donors
- Local church partnerships that equip the church to be the hands and feet of Jesus
- Five-year water source maintenance and sustainability (funded by beneficiary communities on a volunteer basis)
Yes! The village you are helping is a real village. All families photographed or shared from the project page have given their permission to have their information shared with you.
Lifewater has local staff that live and serve among the communities and schools where Lifewater works. Our staff know the language and the culture and are best equipped to serve communities. Because we seek to ensure sustainable water projects and community buy in, we do not allow donors to visit the projects they sponsor. However, we do commit to sending real-time updates, photos, and stories from the projects themselves.
With more than 40 years’ experience, LIfewater is the longest-running Christian clean water charity in North America. Over those 40 years, Lifewater has worked in more than 45 different countries. Currently, our work is focused in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania) and Southeast Asia (Cambodia).
Lifewater identifies countries and regions that are unreached and underserved with basic water access and sanitation, which means we focus on areas where other organizations are not serving.
Although great strides have been made in the past 20 years to solve the global water crisis, remote and rural populations still remain unreached with adequate water and sanitation. These distant regions are difficult and often costly for governments and NGOs to serve well. Many of these communities feel as though they have been forgotten.
Currently, Lifewater has programs in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Cambodia. You can go to lifewater.org/projects to select a specific water project to help. Because our programs are regionalized and made in partnership with the local governments, we are not able to take requests for specific water projects outside of our existing programs.
Lifewater budgets 80% of expenditures for programs. The remaining 20% is split between administrative/management and fundraising expenses. This ratio is best in class for nonprofits and is why Lifewater has received the highest rating from Charity Navigator.
Administrative/management expenses are used to ensure that we are effective in managing the funds entrusted to us and include the following types of expenses: accounting personnel, leadership time, professional development of staff, external auditors, legal counsel, government registration expenses in every U.S. state, credit card fees for processing donations, bank fees, database maintenance, and office expenses.
Fundraising expenses generate the income needed to do the work that we set out to do. These include the cost of direct mail appeals and communication, marketing projects, donor relations personnel, and email communication systems. Last year, every dollar invested into Lifewater fundraising efforts resulted in $10 of donation for the organization.
Over our 40 year history, Lifewater has received the highest accreditations from the most respected rating organization in the industry. Lifewater is recognized as one of the top-rated charities in the United States by independent reporting organizations, including:
- Charity Navigator (four stars)
- Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA)
- Guidestar (Platinum)
- Great Nonprofits (five star)
- Excellence in Giving
Learn more at https://lifewater.org/top-rated-charity.
Lifewater’s work is founded on the belief that every person is made in the image of God. It is with this conviction that we seek out the globe’s most unreached, marginalized people groups in need of safe water.
Both nationally and internationally, 100 percent of our staff are Christians. These Christian staff help facilitate Lifewater’s Healthy Church strategy in communities. And, where there are no churches, we work with church planting partners to start new churches.
To create Healthy Churches, Lifewater first trains church leaders in foundational theology. These leaders are equipped with the basic story of the Christian faith and the biblical mandate to love others. Leaders learn that stopping the spread of disease and caring for the vulnerable aligns with our responsibility as Christians to love our neighbor.
Second, Lifewater ensures churches have safe bathrooms on their premises, handwashing stations, clean water nearby, and the education to promote health within their congregations. It’s imperative that churches are early adopters of healthy hygiene practices.
Third, Lifewater encourages churches to help vulnerable households become Healthy Homes. Church leaders undergo a training to become WASH (water access, sanitation, and hygiene) advocates in their communities. These advocates are encouraged to identify widows, child-headed households, the elderly, and the disabled to help them meet the health standards of Lifewater’s programs.
Lifewater’s Vision of a Healthy Village strategy is a relationship-first method. This model transforms entire regions house by house, village by village, and school by school. It is among the most intensive household-level work happening in the entire developing world and is closely tracked for progress, sustainability, and overall impact.
We construct custom-engineered safe water sources and teach life-saving health and sanitation practices in local villages and schools in need.
Story
Clean Water, New Life: Buzunesh’s Story
August 2020
A new corrugated roof rests atop Buzunesh’s home, and the structure is framed by coffee and false banana plants in a picture of cleanliness and prosperity. Just a year ago, this image was only in Buzunesh’s prayers.
Today, the family has safe drinking water a few minutes from their home, a thriving farm, and healthy children who are able to go to school.
“Glory to God, our prayer for clean water has been heard,” Buzunesh said.
Buzunesh lives in Doko Midija village with her husband, Lema, and their seven children. For years, Buzunesh and her daughters walked for two hours a day to fetch water from a faraway community. It was hardly enough water to survive. Plus, the walks were dangerous. Many women and girls were attacked.
Today, the new water well is three minutes from their home. Instead of walking for water, Buzunesh’s daughters can go to school.
“I never thought that I could reach high school,” Buzunesh’s daughter, Lanke, said, who is now in 9th grade. “I used to arrive at school late and miss classes while helping my mother transport water, and I didn’t have time to study at home.”
Today, Lanke and her sisters can study, learn, and become the people they dream of becoming.
“Now, we think not about survival, but growth,” Buzunesh said.
Since saving time and money, the family has been able to invest in their farm. In addition to sending their children to school, Buzunesh and her husband built a new, more permanent home with the saved income. It brings them great joy.
“We are committed to protecting the water point and using it properly because we have tasted life without clean water,” Buzunesh said.
With safe water and sanitation practices, families like Buzunesh’s are transformed. You can be a part of a transformation story. Sponsor a water project today, and follow along to see your impact.
Life in Doko Midija: Bizunesh’s Story
Bizunesh and her husband have seven hungry mouths to feed, seven thirsty children who they must provide for. There is much to be done and no time to waste.
For nine months out of the year, Bizunesh walks 2 hours on foot to a nearby village to gather water for her family.
Not only does Bizunesh lose valuable work time to gather water, but she must brave the journey alone, one that could expose her to attacks from men.
During the rainiest time of the year, she and her daughters gather water from a pond in Doko Midija village. When that dries up, Bizunesh goes back to her long walk.
“We share the water with our domestic animals and when they step in it they bring a lot of diseases to the water,” she said. “Praise be to God that we are alive and continue to pray for the well in our village.”
Last time Bizunesh contracted giardia, a waterborne parasite, she was in bed for a week, and her children missed three days of school. In rural Ethiopia, women are expected to care for the children, and while she was in bed, her children suffered.
It’s for her family’s future that she prays for safe water.
“We have started building a corrugated iron roof house, but high expenses at the clinic have hindered it,” she said.
You can help Doko Midija village today. Your gift will provide health training for each household, plus a new, safe water source near their village.
Lasting change means more than just building a well. Local Lifewater staff will work house by house to teach healthy habits and share the love of Christ with everyone. Safe water allows families the time, physical health, and saved income to invest in their futures.
Plan
Doko Midija is in a very remote region of Ethiopia
View Interactive Map
This village is on its way to becoming a Healthy Village. The process takes approximately 24 months from start to finish. You can follow along with the progress below.
Here’s the Plan for Doko Midija:

Project Ready
Villages are carefully selected by Lifewater staff and wait for program work to begin in their area.
CLTS
In Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), each village goes through exercises that reveal how their current practices are making them sick, such as identifying all the places where feces are contaminating their environment. This important step equips communities to be knowledgeable about their health and willing to make changes.


Healthy Homes Registered
A home is certified healthy when a family has adopted five healthy habits: washing hands with soap and water, storing and using water safely, building and using a bathroom with a roof and door, using a drying rack to keep dishes off the ground, and keeping the area around the home safe and clean.
ODF
When each household builds and uses their own functioning restroom, a community earns an “Open Defecation Free” (ODF) certification. Each country has their own processes and celebration for ODF villages, and it’s a huge accomplishment towards improved health for everyone.


Water Committee Selected
Doko Midija has selected water committee members to manage the safe village water source. Forming a water committee is a key step toward establishing a safe water source in a village. Committees are made up of local men and women who manage the well and collect fees, ensuring the community’s investment lasts for generations to come.
Construction Started
Work is officially underway to build a new water source for Doko Midija village. Our local teams are using technology appropriate to the region and geography to ensure the new water source is sustainable.


Village Has Safe Water Source
The new safe water source is now complete!
Clean, safe water transforms a village. Everyone gathers to celebrate, thanking God for the miracle in their community.
Healthy Village
Great news! Doko Midija is now a certified Healthy Village. That means the safe water source is complete and more than 90% of the community’s homes are healthy. That is a new future for 215 children and families.

FAQ's
Water Project FAQs
When you sponsor a water project, you are helping bring lasting change. Your gift provides:
- House-to-house hygiene and sanitation education
- Custom engineered water source
- Construction of a safe water source
- Community engagement by Lifewater field staff to ensure change lasts
Lifewater also provides:
- Monitoring and evaluation of the project with real-time updates to donors
- Local church partnerships that equip the church to be the hands and feet of Jesus
- Five-year water source maintenance and sustainability (funded by beneficiary communities on a volunteer basis)
Yes! The village you are helping is a real village. All families photographed or shared from the project page have given their permission to have their information shared with you.
Lifewater has local staff that live and serve among the communities and schools where Lifewater works. Our staff know the language and the culture and are best equipped to serve communities. Because we seek to ensure sustainable water projects and community buy in, we do not allow donors to visit the projects they sponsor. However, we do commit to sending real-time updates, photos, and stories from the projects themselves.
With more than 40 years’ experience, LIfewater is the longest-running Christian clean water charity in North America. Over those 40 years, Lifewater has worked in more than 45 different countries. Currently, our work is focused in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania) and Southeast Asia (Cambodia).
Lifewater identifies countries and regions that are unreached and underserved with basic water access and sanitation, which means we focus on areas where other organizations are not serving.
Although great strides have been made in the past 20 years to solve the global water crisis, remote and rural populations still remain unreached with adequate water and sanitation. These distant regions are difficult and often costly for governments and NGOs to serve well. Many of these communities feel as though they have been forgotten.
Currently, Lifewater has programs in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Cambodia. You can go to lifewater.org/projects to select a specific water project to help. Because our programs are regionalized and made in partnership with the local governments, we are not able to take requests for specific water projects outside of our existing programs.
Lifewater budgets 80% of expenditures for programs. The remaining 20% is split between administrative/management and fundraising expenses. This ratio is best in class for nonprofits and is why Lifewater has received the highest rating from Charity Navigator.
Administrative/management expenses are used to ensure that we are effective in managing the funds entrusted to us and include the following types of expenses: accounting personnel, leadership time, professional development of staff, external auditors, legal counsel, government registration expenses in every U.S. state, credit card fees for processing donations, bank fees, database maintenance, and office expenses.
Fundraising expenses generate the income needed to do the work that we set out to do. These include the cost of direct mail appeals and communication, marketing projects, donor relations personnel, and email communication systems. Last year, every dollar invested into Lifewater fundraising efforts resulted in $10 of donation for the organization.
Over our 40 year history, Lifewater has received the highest accreditations from the most respected rating organization in the industry. Lifewater is recognized as one of the top-rated charities in the United States by independent reporting organizations, including:
- Charity Navigator (four stars)
- Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA)
- Guidestar (Platinum)
- Great Nonprofits (five star)
- Excellence in Giving
Learn more at https://lifewater.org/top-rated-charity.
Lifewater’s work is founded on the belief that every person is made in the image of God. It is with this conviction that we seek out the globe’s most unreached, marginalized people groups in need of safe water.
Both nationally and internationally, 100 percent of our staff are Christians. These Christian staff help facilitate Lifewater’s Healthy Church strategy in communities. And, where there are no churches, we work with church planting partners to start new churches.
To create Healthy Churches, Lifewater first trains church leaders in foundational theology. These leaders are equipped with the basic story of the Christian faith and the biblical mandate to love others. Leaders learn that stopping the spread of disease and caring for the vulnerable aligns with our responsibility as Christians to love our neighbor.
Second, Lifewater ensures churches have safe bathrooms on their premises, handwashing stations, clean water nearby, and the education to promote health within their congregations. It’s imperative that churches are early adopters of healthy hygiene practices.
Third, Lifewater encourages churches to help vulnerable households become Healthy Homes. Church leaders undergo a training to become WASH (water access, sanitation, and hygiene) advocates in their communities. These advocates are encouraged to identify widows, child-headed households, the elderly, and the disabled to help them meet the health standards of Lifewater’s programs.
Lifewater’s Vision of a Healthy Village strategy is a relationship-first method. This model transforms entire regions house by house, village by village, and school by school. It is among the most intensive household-level work happening in the entire developing world and is closely tracked for progress, sustainability, and overall impact.
We construct custom-engineered safe water sources and teach life-saving health and sanitation practices in local villages and schools in need.
Your gift reflects your trust in Lifewater International. We commit to honor your generosity by using your gift to help further the mission and vision of Lifewater International. Your donation is used by Lifewater International according to the project objectives to provide safe drinking water and improved sanitation and hygiene within the specified program area. Lifewater International is a charitable organization as described in 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, registered in the United States. All donations are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law.
Donations are non-refundable. Lifewater International will honor a donor’s request for any pre-approved program or project whenever possible. In rare occasions where this is not possible, gifts will be used where needed, in accordance with the organization’s charitable purpose. In accordance with this policy, donor’s explicitly release Lifewater International from further restriction on such funds.
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