

O Rung Primary School
Water Project
students
Project Funded!
“When [children] are sick, they can’t come to school so they miss classes.” - Meylee, 11
What is Phase 1?
School water projects are larger and take longer than village water projects, so they are split into phases. Phase 1 includes planning, WASH club training, and teacher training.
Phase 1
Funded!
- Story
- Plan
- FAQ's
Life at O Rung Primary: Meylee’s Story
November 2019
Water is scarce at O Rung Primary. Each day, children and teachers worry, “Will I have enough water today?”
Meylee Cheang is one of these children. Meylee is 11 years old and in sixth grade. Her parents sell produce and scrap metal to provide for her and her youngest brother. She dreams of becoming a doctor when she’s old enough.
But, the water problem at O Rung Primary is keeping her and her friends from focusing in class. Right now, the school relies on an electrical pump, but it’s faulty. For much of the year, it doesn’t work. When the electrical pump at O Rung Primary School is working, it doesn’t produce enough water for the 193 students.
There’s a hand pump well on campus too, but it’s contaminated and dries up for part of the year. O Rung Primary School is struggling to access enough basic drinking water.
“The hand pump well produces unsafe water and gets dried out from March to May every year,” Headmaster Sreypov said.
According to Meylee, students in first and second grade don’t understand the danger of drinking contaminated water. When they get very thirsty, they drink the water from the well, so sickness runs rampant for the young children.
And without water, there’s no safe place to use the bathroom. The bathrooms at O Rung Primary, like every school in Cambodia, require water to operate. With no other choice, children relieve themselves outside.
“Many school children defecate in the bush, which makes our school smell,” Meylee said.
At just 11 years old, Meylee is well-versed on how the water problem impacts her classmates.
“The lack of clean water can cause sickness and diarrhea among children,” she said. “When they are sick, they can’t come to school so they miss classes.”
“Their parents spend money on their medical treatment and lose time taking care of sick children instead of earning income,” she added.
Seeing her own brother and her classmates fall sick with waterborne illnesses has inspired Meylee to do something about it.
“I want to be a doctor, treating patients and family members when they are sick,” she said.
You can help Meylee and others at O Rung Primary School today. Your gift will provide health training, menstrual hygiene management curriculum, permanent and sanitary bathrooms on school grounds, plus a new, safe water source just steps from the classroom.
Lasting change means more than building a well. Compelled by the love of Christ, local Lifewater staff work alongside parents, teachers, and administrators to ensure the students of today and tomorrow have a path out of poverty.
Sponsor O Rung Primary School today.
Here’s the Plan for O Rung Primary School:

School Project Ready
Schools are carefully selected by Lifewater staff based on need, geographical location, and willingness to participate in water access, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs.
Healthy School Achieved
The school becomes a certified “Healthy School” once the following are all in place: an active WASH Club, MHM training, a safe water source, and safe bathrooms for the entire school. It is a moment of great accomplishment!

FAQs
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.
When you sponsor a school water project, you are helping to bring change now and for generations to come. Your gift provides:
- Custom-engineered and constructed safe water source on school grounds
- Permanent restrooms for every child, teacher, and administrator
- Rainwater storage tanks and hand washing stations for improved hygiene
- School-wide hygiene and sanitation training
- The formation of a WASH Club of student leaders to reinforce healthy practices
- Menstruation Hygiene Management (MHM) training to reduce stigma and create a safer space for everyone to learn
- Monitoring and evaluation of the project with real-time updates to donors
- Five-year water source maintenance and sustainability promise
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.
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.
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 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. We do not allow donors to visit the projects they sponsor but we do commit to sending real-time updates from the projects themselves and a follow-up story gathered by one of our local journalists once your water project is complete.
Story
Life at O Rung Primary: Meylee’s Story
November 2019
Water is scarce at O Rung Primary. Each day, children and teachers worry, “Will I have enough water today?”
Meylee Cheang is one of these children. Meylee is 11 years old and in sixth grade. Her parents sell produce and scrap metal to provide for her and her youngest brother. She dreams of becoming a doctor when she’s old enough.
But, the water problem at O Rung Primary is keeping her and her friends from focusing in class. Right now, the school relies on an electrical pump, but it’s faulty. For much of the year, it doesn’t work. When the electrical pump at O Rung Primary School is working, it doesn’t produce enough water for the 193 students.
There’s a hand pump well on campus too, but it’s contaminated and dries up for part of the year. O Rung Primary School is struggling to access enough basic drinking water.
“The hand pump well produces unsafe water and gets dried out from March to May every year,” Headmaster Sreypov said.
According to Meylee, students in first and second grade don’t understand the danger of drinking contaminated water. When they get very thirsty, they drink the water from the well, so sickness runs rampant for the young children.
And without water, there’s no safe place to use the bathroom. The bathrooms at O Rung Primary, like every school in Cambodia, require water to operate. With no other choice, children relieve themselves outside.
“Many school children defecate in the bush, which makes our school smell,” Meylee said.
At just 11 years old, Meylee is well-versed on how the water problem impacts her classmates.
“The lack of clean water can cause sickness and diarrhea among children,” she said. “When they are sick, they can’t come to school so they miss classes.”
“Their parents spend money on their medical treatment and lose time taking care of sick children instead of earning income,” she added.
Seeing her own brother and her classmates fall sick with waterborne illnesses has inspired Meylee to do something about it.
“I want to be a doctor, treating patients and family members when they are sick,” she said.
You can help Meylee and others at O Rung Primary School today. Your gift will provide health training, menstrual hygiene management curriculum, permanent and sanitary bathrooms on school grounds, plus a new, safe water source just steps from the classroom.
Lasting change means more than building a well. Compelled by the love of Christ, local Lifewater staff work alongside parents, teachers, and administrators to ensure the students of today and tomorrow have a path out of poverty.
Sponsor O Rung Primary School today.
Plan
Here’s the Plan for O Rung Primary School:

School Project Ready
Schools are carefully selected by Lifewater staff based on need, geographical location, and willingness to participate in water access, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs.
Healthy School Achieved
The school becomes a certified “Healthy School” once the following are all in place: an active WASH Club, MHM training, a safe water source, and safe bathrooms for the entire school. It is a moment of great accomplishment!

FAQ's
FAQs
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.
When you sponsor a school water project, you are helping to bring change now and for generations to come. Your gift provides:
- Custom-engineered and constructed safe water source on school grounds
- Permanent restrooms for every child, teacher, and administrator
- Rainwater storage tanks and hand washing stations for improved hygiene
- School-wide hygiene and sanitation training
- The formation of a WASH Club of student leaders to reinforce healthy practices
- Menstruation Hygiene Management (MHM) training to reduce stigma and create a safer space for everyone to learn
- Monitoring and evaluation of the project with real-time updates to donors
- Five-year water source maintenance and sustainability promise
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.
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.
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 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. We do not allow donors to visit the projects they sponsor but we do commit to sending real-time updates from the projects themselves and a follow-up story gathered by one of our local journalists once your water project is complete.
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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