Duwancho Sositi

223 people

Project Completed

Duwancho Sositi, Ethiopia, Africa

GPS: 6.5897, 38.8733
  • Story
  • Plan
  • FAQ's

Clean Water, New Life: Bekelech’s Story

Bekelech recalls the trickle of water that came from the spout of the broken spring in her community. She remembers the pain on her husband’s face as he battled a kidney infection from the contaminated water.

In Duwancho Sositi village, everything has changed for the better.

The spring that once sat broken and unsafe for drinking was rehabilitated to produce abundant, safe water that will last for generations to come. Families learned hygiene and sanitation practices that prevent the spread of disease, and they learned how to maintain their new water source to ensure it endures the years.

“There is great change in my family since having safe water and personal hygiene,” Bekelech said. “We are freed from being affected by waterborne diseases.”

Bekelech was dressed in a clean white shirt when we met her. She smiled the entire time and never stopped praising the gift of safe water and the opportunities it provides.

“We do not travel far distances to get clean water,” she said. “My children and I collect easily from the new spring.”

Bekelech lives with her six children and her husband, Dejene, in a small but sturdy home in Duwancho Sositi village.

“I started to grow seedlings for sell and grow my income,” her husband, Dejene, said. “My whole family now helps me with this.

Bekelech and her husband have enough income to send their children to school. Now that her children aren’t waiting at the broken spring for contaminated water, they spend more time in class.

According to Bekelech, everyone feels more confident, beautiful, and capable.

“I am very happy for the work of Lifewater International in providing pure water,” Dejene said.

With safe water and sanitation practices, families like Bekelech’s are transformed. You can be a part of a transformation story. Support a village water project today, and follow along to see your impact.

 


November 2018

Life in Duwancho Sositi: Bekelech’s Story

In Duwancho Sositi village, a broken spring sits as a monument to what could have been, a testimony to the overworked and underserved nature of the people in the community.

Bekelech Gabiso, her husband, Dajene, and their six children wake with the sunrise each morning. As Bekelech prepares breakfast and feeds her animals, Bekelech’s daughters begin their short walk to the broken spring, which still manages to produce enough contaminated water to fill their jerry cans.

Ten years ago, the local government in Bekelech’s district constructed what’s called a “protected spring,” meaning they fortified an already natural spring with concrete to protect it from contaminants.

But without teaching residents of Duwancho Sositi how to properly care for their water source, it was just a few years before it began spouting water riddled with disease.

“My husband is seriously sick with a kidney infection and I’ve also been continually affected by giardia,” Bekelech said.

Giardia is a parasite contracted from drinking contaminated water, and it’s common in places with poor sanitation. It can be a rather debilitating illness, and the family has spent much of their income seeking treatment from faraway clinics.

Bekelech and her husband put their hope in their children.

“My greatest dream is to be able to support our children to study in the health profession,” the mother of six said.

Neither she nor her husband have ever set foot in a classroom, and seeing their children through school remains their most idolized goal.

“Hopefully, we can get safe water our village and our children will encounter chances in life that we were not able to,” she said.

You can help Bekelech’s family and others in Duwancho Sositi 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.

Here’s what happens when you sponsor a village water project through Lifewater:

Partner with a village. Your gift kickstarts a community water project.
Teach healthy habits. Small changes make a big impact on family health.
Build a well. The village contributes up to 15% for construction.
Measure impact. Local staff track success and provide support.
Engage the church. We equip local churches to love their community.

Sponsor Duwancho Sositi village today.

Duwancho Sositi 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 Duwancho Sositi:

ready

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.

clts
healthy-homes-registered

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.

odf
wc_schoolmc_formed

Water Committee Selected

Duwancho Sositi 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 Duwancho Sositi village. Our local teams are using technology appropriate to the region and geography to ensure the new water source is sustainable.

construction_start
construction_complete

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! Duwancho Sositi 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 223 children and families.

healthy_village_achieved

Water Project FAQs

What is included in the cost of a water project?

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)
Is this a real village? Am I impacting this actual village?

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.

Can I visit programs and/or my sponsored water project?

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.

Where does Lifewater work?

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).

Why these countries and regions?

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.

Can I request a water project in a specific country?

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.

What percent of funds go towards 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. 

Is Lifewater approved/vetted by 3rd party organizations?

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.

How does Lifewater integrate faith into its work?

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.

What is Lifewater’s process? What does the organization do, and how does it do it?

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: Bekelech’s Story

Bekelech recalls the trickle of water that came from the spout of the broken spring in her community. She remembers the pain on her husband’s face as he battled a kidney infection from the contaminated water.

In Duwancho Sositi village, everything has changed for the better.

The spring that once sat broken and unsafe for drinking was rehabilitated to produce abundant, safe water that will last for generations to come. Families learned hygiene and sanitation practices that prevent the spread of disease, and they learned how to maintain their new water source to ensure it endures the years.

“There is great change in my family since having safe water and personal hygiene,” Bekelech said. “We are freed from being affected by waterborne diseases.”

Bekelech was dressed in a clean white shirt when we met her. She smiled the entire time and never stopped praising the gift of safe water and the opportunities it provides.

“We do not travel far distances to get clean water,” she said. “My children and I collect easily from the new spring.”

Bekelech lives with her six children and her husband, Dejene, in a small but sturdy home in Duwancho Sositi village.

“I started to grow seedlings for sell and grow my income,” her husband, Dejene, said. “My whole family now helps me with this.

Bekelech and her husband have enough income to send their children to school. Now that her children aren’t waiting at the broken spring for contaminated water, they spend more time in class.

According to Bekelech, everyone feels more confident, beautiful, and capable.

“I am very happy for the work of Lifewater International in providing pure water,” Dejene said.

With safe water and sanitation practices, families like Bekelech’s are transformed. You can be a part of a transformation story. Support a village water project today, and follow along to see your impact.

 


November 2018

Life in Duwancho Sositi: Bekelech’s Story

In Duwancho Sositi village, a broken spring sits as a monument to what could have been, a testimony to the overworked and underserved nature of the people in the community.

Bekelech Gabiso, her husband, Dajene, and their six children wake with the sunrise each morning. As Bekelech prepares breakfast and feeds her animals, Bekelech’s daughters begin their short walk to the broken spring, which still manages to produce enough contaminated water to fill their jerry cans.

Ten years ago, the local government in Bekelech’s district constructed what’s called a “protected spring,” meaning they fortified an already natural spring with concrete to protect it from contaminants.

But without teaching residents of Duwancho Sositi how to properly care for their water source, it was just a few years before it began spouting water riddled with disease.

“My husband is seriously sick with a kidney infection and I’ve also been continually affected by giardia,” Bekelech said.

Giardia is a parasite contracted from drinking contaminated water, and it’s common in places with poor sanitation. It can be a rather debilitating illness, and the family has spent much of their income seeking treatment from faraway clinics.

Bekelech and her husband put their hope in their children.

“My greatest dream is to be able to support our children to study in the health profession,” the mother of six said.

Neither she nor her husband have ever set foot in a classroom, and seeing their children through school remains their most idolized goal.

“Hopefully, we can get safe water our village and our children will encounter chances in life that we were not able to,” she said.

You can help Bekelech’s family and others in Duwancho Sositi 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.

Here’s what happens when you sponsor a village water project through Lifewater:

Partner with a village. Your gift kickstarts a community water project.
Teach healthy habits. Small changes make a big impact on family health.
Build a well. The village contributes up to 15% for construction.
Measure impact. Local staff track success and provide support.
Engage the church. We equip local churches to love their community.

Sponsor Duwancho Sositi village today.

Plan

Duwancho Sositi 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 Duwancho Sositi:

ready

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.

clts
healthy-homes-registered

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.

odf
wc_schoolmc_formed

Water Committee Selected

Duwancho Sositi 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 Duwancho Sositi village. Our local teams are using technology appropriate to the region and geography to ensure the new water source is sustainable.

construction_start
construction_complete

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! Duwancho Sositi 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 223 children and families.

healthy_village_achieved

FAQ's

Water Project FAQs

What is included in the cost of a water project?

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)
Is this a real village? Am I impacting this actual village?

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.

Can I visit programs and/or my sponsored water project?

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.

Where does Lifewater work?

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).

Why these countries and regions?

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.

Can I request a water project in a specific country?

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.

What percent of funds go towards 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. 

Is Lifewater approved/vetted by 3rd party organizations?

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.

How does Lifewater integrate faith into its work?

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.

What is Lifewater’s process? What does the organization do, and how does it do it?

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.