New Water Project!
ETI is excited to announce that we recently signed an agreement to do a water project with a new partner, Rewerts Well Company, Inc., in Nevada, Iowa! The owner of the company, Justin Rewerts, will be leading the Well Rehabilitation Project which locates and fixes wells that are in disrepair in the Mwanga and Same Districts of Tanzania.
Justin first came to ETI staff to discuss another completely unrelated water project being done by a church in Iowa with their companion parish in Tanzania. Through that conversation, we discovered that he had a real passion to work on repairing wells. In January of 2012, Justin went with an ETI delegation to Tanzania to see first-hand what that kind of work would involve.
After 2 weeks on the ground, much time spent with District government officials talking about the problem and visiting sites, and even some hands-on time trying to do some minor repair work, Justin was hooked! There clearly was a need for his services, and the cost of repairing old wells was obviously going to be dramatically less than digging new ones. Justin felt that he could help, even with the wells that could not be restored. ”They need to be cemented shut to protect the ground water from contamination,” stated Rewerts, “so I’ll buy the cement to close them up if the local people will just donate the sand and help with the labor.”
Fifteen non-functioning wells have been identified by the local Same and Mwanga District officials, so Justin has volunteered equipment to take over, including a camera he can lower into the wells to get a more accurate picture of their condition, and he has recruited a colleague to go help. They will go to Tanzania in January of 2013 to spend 2 weeks working on repairing or closing the 15 wells.
Talk about a big impact for a small amount of money!
If you would like to donate to this project, and help fund the repair of these wells, click here, or go to our “donate” tab, and make an online donation today! Every gift, no matter how large or small, brings us closer to providing clean water for the people of Tanzania.