OUR MISSION

The Clean Water Foundation, Inc. is a grass roots non-governmental organization (NGO) drilling deep water wells in East Africa, and providing bicycles to impovershed residents of rural western Uganda.

View Map of Uganda

Our Two Programs

We Build Wells

We Change Lives in an Entire Village, Forever

Could we do without hot and cold running water directly to our kitchens and bathrooms? Or without pure water for drinking? What if your only water source was a mud hole? That is how many families obtain their onlyh source of water.

Building a well for an entire village changes not only the entire productivity of the village, it saves countless lives and avoids otherwise unavoidable disease {link to Bad Water}

Clean Water Is Scarce

It is not only the distance and time required for the daily chore of fetching water, that makes our project worthwhile. Shallow wells are filled with muddy water, livestock drinks from, wallows in, and contaminates these open pits. Because water can only be gathered one cup at a time, and then poured in to containers, long lines at these shallow wells consume hours spent collecting this dirty water.

Bacteria, worms, and other disease carrying organisms thrive in the still, warm, shallow surface water. Deep water wells provide clean, cold, abundant and safe drinking water, which can save hundreds of man-hours a day, while also dramatically decreasing water borne disease.

Drilling a deep water well, insures the availability of clean water to an entire village. This is the most direct, efficient, and easiest way to seriously curtail the spread of water borne, oftern fatal diseases.

Click here to see how serious this problem is, especially for children.

Clean, pure, disease free

Now you have the opportunity to help develop water sources for villages in ruralWestern Uganda.

Ready to build a well and provide clean drinking water to an entire village?

We Give Away Bicycles

Changing A Life, One Person at a Time

In rural western Uganda, bordering Congo, the general population doesn’t use bikes. They walk. People travel by foot over hard dirt or badly damaged paved roads to go to the hospital, market places, a water source and places of employment. In addition to basic transportation, bicycles carry water and firewood. They can can be fitted with carriers for package and can carry almost as much cargo as small pickup truck.

We provide new bicycles to those who will benefit in Western Uganda.

The Clean Water Organization differs from the many other U.S.NGO’s, in that rather than collecting, repairing, storing, and shipping bikes from the United States to Africa, we use local contacts to receive bikes imported from China or India with much lower shipping costs and without the profit which would be taken by importing bicycles to the U.S., and then trans-shipping them to Uganda. As a small NGO purchasing locally in Uganda, we are able to get much more efficiency out of each dollar contributed, with over 98 cents of each dollar going to bike purchases, with no middle men profits, shipping, parts, repair labor, or storage costs.

What Inspired the Idea to provide both water AND bicycles?

After a grueling 5 hours tracking Mountain Gorillas through the dense Virunga Forest, in 90 degree heat, high humidity, and altitudes as high as 9,000 feet up the very steep side of a volcano, we arrived back where we had parked our Land Cruiser, totally exhausted. Our 16 year old bearer who had carried my 35 pound pack all morning asked if we could give him a ride back to his parent’s subsistence farm, as he had many chores yet to help with before sunset. We were astounded to find out that he lived about 12 miles away.

When I asked how he got to work, he explained that he leaves his parents farm before dawn and briskly walks for nearly 3 hours to get to the trail head in the hope for a job that day as a bearer. There are many days he arrives to find no one needs his services. On those occasions, or if his customer has a full vehicle, he walks back home.

With a bike, he could save 4 hours a day, which he could devote to helping his parents plow by hand, sow, tend, and harvest the crops which are their main source of food. As his only source of cash income is the $10-$15 he gets as a bearer, there is no possible way to save the $100.00 needed to buy a bike, even though that would enable him to travel farther for work, add 50% to his time available to get cash jobs, or enable him to double his production at the farm. Upon hearing his story, my wife and I jointly decided that we could afford the one hundred dollars to buy him a bike and thereby change his life.

His story is one dozens we heard from these very hard working families who can just about afford food and essential clothing. School Children routinely walk up to 8 miles daily to attend school. The gift of a bicycle can change not only these lives forever, but that of an entire family as well. Where else can the price of one good dinner in the USA bring a life altering improvement to a hard working family, or save primary school children a 2 hour walk to school and a 2 hour walk home. Your gift of $100.00 can make this magic happen.

Should you choose to contribute a smaller amount, your gift will combine with that of others to bring cheap, reliable, and much needed source of transportation to needy and deserving individuals.

Ready to buy a bike and change someone’s life forever?

For questions or comments about our well building program, e-mail us at

wells@thecleanwaterfoundation.com

Bike pix

For questions or comments about our bicycle program, e-mail us at

wheels@thecleanwaterfoundation.com

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