It’s three weeks until #givingTuesday which is when donations to the Big Give Christmas Challenge 2017 will open. We are very excited that we have been selected to participate this year.

This means that all donations made to WellFound via the Big Give for seven days from 12 noon on Tuesday 28th November will be doubled at no cost to you, the donor.

We are raising money to work in a village in Guinea-Bissau in 2018. You can read about our project here: Water, making a world of difference

To give you an idea of what we can achieve together in that village in 2018, over the next three weeks we will be featuring stories from three villages where we have worked in the past.

This week we will look at Quihumbe. This is a small village in rural Guinea-Bissau, about 2 hours north of the capital. We started working there in May 2015, and dug a well down to 12m. We worked with the villagers on improvements in hygiene, and helped them set up their first market garden.

I had the chance to visit in September 2017. The villager elder was delighted to see us, and we spent a long time discussing the changes in the village since clean water had arrived.
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He said that waterborne diseases had dropped significantly especially amongst the young which is very important to reduce infant mortality. (We always confirm these perceptions by recording statistics as we work with the villages, and these statistics confirm the perception of the village elder). This village also has a small herd of cattle, and the elder also said that they were more healthy since the arrival of the water. We always provide a trough for cattle to use which takes the run-off water from the well. Not only does this provide water for the animals, but it also stops them taking dirt into the main well compound.
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In all the villages where we work, we keep in contact with the villagers for up to three years after the first provision of water. We think it is vital to support them in transforming their villages and their lives, and we will do the same with The Big Give village in 2018.

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