What is Water is Life?
The Rotary Club of Fishers, Indiana has embarked on a mission of challenging ourselves to deliver on a promise of providing fresh, clean, sustainable drinking water to the people of Sierra Leone, Africa. Our objective is to lead through imagination, energy, networking, and funding, to drill 100 wells which will supply over 100,000 men, women, and children with one of the most fundamental building blocks of life – clean water.
The challenges of finding clean drinking water by people of many countries within the continent of Africa is well documented, tragic, and life limiting. Sierra Leone represents a country, that after seeing a decade of horrific civil conflict continues to be a country of tragic extremes, where less than half the population of 6.2 million people have access to clean drinking water and where 25% percent of children die from water-borne illness before they reach the age of five.
To help us deliver on our goal of drilling 100 wells we have carefully chosen to align ourselves with an experienced, reliable, and committed in-country partner, World Hope International, who will provide the Sierra Leone-based resources and drilling expertise and logistics to help us deliver this precious life-giving resource – clean water. Our host rotary club, the Rotary Club of Freetown, Sierra Leone, is working side-by-side with us as they provide invaluable guidance and support to World Hope International in selecting the villages with the most pressing need for fresh drinking water.
We began our effort in March of 2009 and as of June 2010, 17 wells, in as many villages have been completed, changing the lives of nearly 14,000 men, women, and children. In November 2010 our parent organization Rotary International, awarded our project one of the largest Matching Grants ever approved for a humanitarian Rotary project. This grant, along with funds from other Rotary Clubs and Rotary Districts across the country, combined with the funds our club has raised through our Water Is Life fund raising event, provided the funding for the next 71 wells bringing our total funded wells to 88 !