When it comes to water scarcity solutions, most organizations install a central standpipe, well, or borehole in a village: water + access = problem solved.

Why, then, have we chosen to build rainwater harvesting systems on individual houses? 

Because these communities do not have running water at home, women (and often, children) must go where water is available to fetch enough for the family’s needs: drinking, cleaning, bathing, laundry, cooking, watering food, gardens, and livestock…

They are limited by how much they can physically carry – and by money, too. Some sources, like standpipes, require payment. When this is unaffordable, they are forced to alternative sources like rivers, where the risk of bringing home buckets of waterborne disease runs high.

The contaminants in rivers aren’t the only concern. In northern Tanzania, toxic quantities of volcanic fluoride seep into the groundwater, manifesting as skeletal fluorosis that cripples bodies and bones.

Even when it threatens disease and death, water is life—we cannot exist without it. Even if it takes all their time, energy, and money, these women must still fetch it.

Take Advela, for example. She’s a single mother with 24 hours in a day, five children to feed, clothe, and educate, and no means of generating income. She needs 80 liters of water, which requires at least 8 hours to fetch, costing money she doesn’t have.

Every single day, Advela and countless others like her are trying to balance an impossible equation: There is too little of what they have to meet how much they need. So long as they don’t have water at home, this is their inescapable reality.

Once we install a domestic rainwater harvesting system, the heavens deliver infinite pure, safe water directly to a woman’s home – for free.  Just one inch falling on a 500 sq ft roof harvests 300 gallons, which would take Advela 10 days and nights of nonstop walking to collect.

Rain is nature’s solution, falling from the sky – all we must do is catch it. 

Help us bring water home to more women like Advela. →  Help provide clean water and change a family’s future.

Every $500 builds a rainwater harvesting tank, providing a family with clean, safe water for a lifetime. Your generosity fuels real change—healthier communities, empowered women, and brighter futures.  Donate