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End Long Walks for Water for Young Mothers Like Birke
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“We need clean water badly, it could help us change our lives.” - Birke
Ethiopia
- Story
- Ethiopia
- FAQ's
Your gift will provide clean water and improved health for mothers like Birke in Ethiopia.
Birke’s Life in Nensebo, Ethiopia
June 2021
In rural Nensebo, Ethiopia water is scarce. Of Ethiopia’s population, nearly one in four people do not have access to safe water or toilets. Children in particular are exposed to preventable diseases that clean water and sanitation could eliminate.
Birke stoops on a muddy bank to gather water for her family. She uses a blue jug to scoop water from a small, trickling stream and into her container.
“We drink unsafe water from an open spring which animals also access,” said Birke. “It makes us ill to drink it.”
Birke’s family relies on this stream for some of the year, but when the rains come the trickle swells with muddy flood water and it becomes unusable.
When this happens, Birke must walk for two hours to fetch water from another village.
“My back feels like it will break when I carry a heavy jerry can home,” said Birke. “It tires me out but I do not have a chance to take a rest.”
Birke and her husband grow coffee for a living in Wolale Village. The region is fertile for growing coffee and their yields are good, but the water challenges are so severe in Wolale that they dream of moving somewhere else.
Birke has one daughter, three-year-old Sidise. Birke’s greatest wish is for her to have safe water to drink and the chance for an education.
“I hope my daughter won’t have to go through what I went through as a little girl,” said Birke. “I want to send her to school when she grows up.”
“We need clean water badly, it could help us change our lives,” added Birke.
With safe water, Sidise would be spared waterborne diseases and would have the opportunity to complete her education. Birke and her husband would also have more time and resources for their farming, to better provide for their family.
When you give safe water, you give to mothers just like Birke in Nensebo, Ethiopia.
You’ll give young mothers a chance to dream about the future and their children’s education, empowering women in Ethiopia to have confidence in what they can do.
About Ethiopia
115 million people live in Ethiopia. A third of them are drinking contaminated water. It is estimated that 7.5% of the global water crisis is in Ethiopia alone.
This water crisis has consequences for everything from child mortality rates to agricultural outputs.
The majority of families Lifewater serves in Ethiopia rely on agriculture for their annual income. In these rural areas, women and children may walk more than three hours a day to gather water from rivers or ponds animals also use.
Children miss days and weeks of school every year and mothers lose time they could have spent cooking or tending to their fields, all for contaminated water that makes them sick.
These water challenges create sanitation obstacles as well. Almost 1 in 4 people in Ethiopia do not have access to a toilet, so they go out in the open. This is a major public health crisis.
The good news is, this is entirely preventable. Lifewater’s work shows that waterborne illness can be nearly eliminated with basic access to things like clean drinking water, proper sanitation, and washing hands with soap.
Give safe water to Ethiopia today.
Your gift will help provide safe drinking water and improved sanitation and hygiene for the entire Nensebo program rather than one specific village, making it possible for Lifewater to reach this family as well as their neighbors.
Yes! You can expect regular updates on progress in the Nensebo region. And, when the communities in the region are transformed with safe water, you’ll receive a story and photos from a family whose life is changed because of your gift.
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.
“We are confident Lifewater’s work will have life-sustaining impact.”
– Cary A. Paine, The Stewardship Foundation
Story
Your gift will provide clean water and improved health for mothers like Birke in Ethiopia.
Birke’s Life in Nensebo, Ethiopia
June 2021
In rural Nensebo, Ethiopia water is scarce. Of Ethiopia’s population, nearly one in four people do not have access to safe water or toilets. Children in particular are exposed to preventable diseases that clean water and sanitation could eliminate.
Birke stoops on a muddy bank to gather water for her family. She uses a blue jug to scoop water from a small, trickling stream and into her container.
“We drink unsafe water from an open spring which animals also access,” said Birke. “It makes us ill to drink it.”
Birke’s family relies on this stream for some of the year, but when the rains come the trickle swells with muddy flood water and it becomes unusable.
When this happens, Birke must walk for two hours to fetch water from another village.
“My back feels like it will break when I carry a heavy jerry can home,” said Birke. “It tires me out but I do not have a chance to take a rest.”
Birke and her husband grow coffee for a living in Wolale Village. The region is fertile for growing coffee and their yields are good, but the water challenges are so severe in Wolale that they dream of moving somewhere else.
Birke has one daughter, three-year-old Sidise. Birke’s greatest wish is for her to have safe water to drink and the chance for an education.
“I hope my daughter won’t have to go through what I went through as a little girl,” said Birke. “I want to send her to school when she grows up.”
“We need clean water badly, it could help us change our lives,” added Birke.
With safe water, Sidise would be spared waterborne diseases and would have the opportunity to complete her education. Birke and her husband would also have more time and resources for their farming, to better provide for their family.
When you give safe water, you give to mothers just like Birke in Nensebo, Ethiopia.
You’ll give young mothers a chance to dream about the future and their children’s education, empowering women in Ethiopia to have confidence in what they can do.
Ethiopia
About Ethiopia
115 million people live in Ethiopia. A third of them are drinking contaminated water. It is estimated that 7.5% of the global water crisis is in Ethiopia alone.
This water crisis has consequences for everything from child mortality rates to agricultural outputs.
The majority of families Lifewater serves in Ethiopia rely on agriculture for their annual income. In these rural areas, women and children may walk more than three hours a day to gather water from rivers or ponds animals also use.
Children miss days and weeks of school every year and mothers lose time they could have spent cooking or tending to their fields, all for contaminated water that makes them sick.
These water challenges create sanitation obstacles as well. Almost 1 in 4 people in Ethiopia do not have access to a toilet, so they go out in the open. This is a major public health crisis.
The good news is, this is entirely preventable. Lifewater’s work shows that waterborne illness can be nearly eliminated with basic access to things like clean drinking water, proper sanitation, and washing hands with soap.
Give safe water to Ethiopia today.
FAQ's
Your gift will help provide safe drinking water and improved sanitation and hygiene for the entire Nensebo program rather than one specific village, making it possible for Lifewater to reach this family as well as their neighbors.
Yes! You can expect regular updates on progress in the Nensebo region. And, when the communities in the region are transformed with safe water, you’ll receive a story and photos from a family whose life is changed because of your gift.
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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