I fully recognise that we do not need to go far to find genuine poverty near to home, and indeed within our own communities. I am, however, reasonably content that every person in this country at least has reliable access to safe water. Even a homeless person can access safe drinking water from public water fountains, or in publicly-accessible restrooms if in real desperation. This is simply not the case in many parts of the developing world.

Water is vital to life on earth, and this is where the amazing work of WellBoring comes in! The average human can last three weeks or more without food, but will last no longer than three days without water. Unsafe water can kill in a matter of hours, but can also lead to prolonged and painful deaths from diseases such a cholera and bilharzia. Children are especially at risk, and young girls, in particular, face barriers to education when they are not connected to easily accessible safe water. Teenage girls already miss up to five days of school per month due to their menstrual cycles, with even more days lost as they also need to make lengthy journeys each day to collect water for their families. The task of water collection is not just time-consuming: it can be perilous; girls often face threats such as sexual harassment, as well as attacks by wild animals during their long walks to carry out water collection.

When I lived in Zambia 20 years ago, I saw first-hand the impact of having a safe and reliable water source. The village I stayed in was served by a borewell which involved a 15-minute round-trip, and which was installed by an American charity five years before I arrived. Prior to this, the only other drinking water was from open rivers and streams, sometimes as much as five miles away. These were often dirty and full of pestilence, shrank to a trickle during the dry season, and were a magnet for dangerous animals such as venomous snakes and disease-bearing insects, making water collection a highly risky task, for water which would often make the drinkers sick anyway. WellBoring has provided over 500 wells in Primary Schools in Kenya and other sub-Saharan African countries, meaning that over 500,000 people now have access to safe water for the first time! Each new well costs £7,000 and gets safe water to over 1,000 people – less than £7 per person – and with WellBoring’s maintenance program, wells last over 30 years.