Meet Elita
Elita has 11 children ranging in age from 29 to three, five of whom are still in school — and whose father died last year. In the midst of her grief, she was pitched into survival mode, and has been stretched too thin to make ends meet.
She has a tiny water storage hut in her yard with a lock on it. Elita spends an average of seven hours a day fetching a precious few gallons. She doesn’t have donkeys, so she can never carry enough to last the day, let alone store.
She weaves rope out of old mosquito nets: painstaking work that fetches a few meager cents per piece. She might sell 10 on a weekly market day — not nearly enough to cover food, school uniforms, or household expenses, let alone the medical bills that arise from drinking unclean river water. Her husband left behind a piece of land she could farm if only she had the time, energy, or money for seeds.
It’s rainy season, and her new rainwater harvesting system is ready.
Soon, she will get back at least seven hours of her day. She is already planning to grow a bean crop, sell it, and buy a stock of corn to resell. Her greenhouse will feed the family, and with clean, pure water and food at home, she can begin to be the mother, the businesswoman, the thriving and empowered head of her family that she knows she can be.
Every dollar helps turn that hope into reality. Please consider a year-end gift:
$15 gives one child lifelong access to clean drinking water.
$150 gives a family a residential greenhouse full of organic crops to harvest multiple times a week.
$500 builds a residential rainwater harvesting system, freeing a family from the daily search for water.
