It’s World Water Day. Anna and her team of women load cement and sand into a trailer, making light work of the heavy materials; in no time, everything is on board. They hop on, too, and the tractor takes them to the home where they’re building a rainwater harvesting system.

This is Nsengoni, where we’re constructing 80 tanks for families most in need. The selection process wasn’t easy. Everyone suffers from undrinkable groundwater, and the marginally more potable alternative is far away and often unavailable. The women’s daily quest is all-consuming. The fatigue in their eyes is deep.

The lithe energy of our builders is a stark contrast. Their strength makes the labor seem effortless, and they chatter companionably as they work. To see their ease, their lightness of being, you wouldn’t know that each has lived the same desperate scarcity as the women of Nsengoni.

Anna and her team are harbingers of change. They are manifestations of what is possible when women are freed from enslavement to water. Each tank they build is a bridge over the gap between the giver and the receiver.

It is a hand extended – an invitation to step into power. 

The women of Nsengoni are bonded by their common scarcity. At the well, a mother lays her baby in the grass before filling her bucket and hoisting it onto her head. Her friend will lift her baby to her so she can balance motherhood and the burden of the bucket, and steady herself for the long walk home.

These tanks will help the women who receive them, but the web of togetherness they have forged means the benefits will ripple out to so many more. When you solve water for 80, and each helps her neighbor, her sister, her friend, the whole community is uplifted. With so many women with so much more time, energy, power, change begins to manifest at every level. And we’re just getting started.

When one inch of rain falls on a 500-square-foot roof, we can harvest 300 gallons of clean, safe water. Each inch means another woman need never walk for water again. This World Water Day, help us make it rain.

Donate Today

Donate this World Water Day and unlock an exclusive 20% discount at our Save the Rain Store, a special offer to celebrate our donors!

Double Your Impact This World Water Day: Every dollar you give today will be matched up to $21,000 for our It’s About Time campaign!