Charity Hopes to Put an End to Villages’ Water Woes

In Bishikiltu, Ethiopia, a group of villages that lie west of the capital city of Addis Ababa,

women and their daughters walk six hours round trip, sometimes twice a day, to collect water for their families from a stream shared with thirsty cattle.

Marla Smith-Nilson, founder of Water 1st International, in Seattle, visited the area last spring, accompanied the women on their journey, and watched as they carried home the water in heavy ceramic containers on their backs. Despite the women’s arduous trek, the water did more damage than it did good, she says.

“It’s just muddy, horrible water that no one should drink,” says Ms. Smith-Nilson. “Every single one of the women we spoke to had lost at least one child to diarrhea, which is directly related to dirty water and poor hygiene.”

In a year and a half’s time, Ms. Smith-Nilson hopes the back-breaking walk and the illnesses caused by the contaminated stream water will be history. Working with Water Action, a group based in Ethiopia, Water 1st has embarked on its most ambitious project to date: raising $270,000 to provide ready access to safe drinking water, latrines, and hygiene education to people who live in the villages. The group is about a third of the way to its fund-raising goal.

The project’s purpose extends beyond a healthier community. “We also hope to see some other benefits — from girls going to school, women having time to do things like grow food or open up small businesses, or maybe even having time to rest,” says Ms. Smith-Nilson. “If these women had a little bit of free time in their day, that would also be a success.”

Water 1st is among several new groups — including A Child’s Right, in Tacoma, Wash.; the Blue Planet Run Foundation, in Mill Valley, Calif.; and Global Water Challenge, in Washington — that seek to improve lives by helping with clean water and sanitation projects overseas. Established international relief organizations, including World Vision, in Seattle, and CARE, in Atlanta, have also been conducting water, sanitation, and hygiene-education projects for years.

“The need is so huge, we are not really bumping into one another,” says Ms. Smith-Nilson. “That just tells me there is room for all of us.”

‘Start to Finish’

Ms. Smith-Nilson, a civil engineer by training, has been working to get clean water to poor people overseas since 1990, when she co-founded WaterPartners International, in Kansas City, Mo. In 2005, she and several colleagues left to start a new group that focused on raising money mostly from individuals, rather than foundations and the government. “We’re all working toward the same end goal — safe drinking water for those in need,” says Steven J. Byers, director of development and communications at WaterPartners, in an e-mail message. “The split came about due to a difference in how to achieve that goal.”

To Ms. Smith-Nilson, individual donors are key. “Individuals don’t realize their 25 bucks can have a huge impact,” she says. “They feel this is something for the government to solve and for Bill Gates to solve with all of his money.”

Still, the group did apply for — and was rejected for — a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle. Even so, the group has more than doubled its donations, to $1-million so far, since it started. Its biggest gift, $100,000, came from the Agora Foundation, a donor-advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, in Mountain View, Calif.

Increased contributions are not the only sign of interest in its work. About 15 people, six more than last year, have signed up for the charity’s annual trip abroad — to Ethiopia this year — where donors can observe the group’s work firsthand.

“That kind of transparency helps people feel good about giving to us and helps create these lifelong donors,” says Ms. Smith-Nilson. “There’s no way you can go to Bishikiltu and talk to people, hear their stories, and not want to do something about it.”

Darryl Swenson, a board member and retired money manager, pledged $25,000 to the group this year, more than double his gift last year, in large part because of accomplishments he witnessed the charity make in its overseas projects.

“Water 1st effectively manages the process from start to finish,” he says, “from fund raising to distributing money to partners in the field, and following it up to make sure projects work, and then going on to the next project.”

Discerning With Aid

The group works with established local organizations in four countries — Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Honduras, and India — where it expects to help 14,000 people this year, double last year’s number. Despite the expansion, the need for help is overwhelming: The World Health Organization, in Geneva, estimates that one billion people don’t have access to clean water, and 2.6 billion people lack sanitation facilities.

Still, Ms. Smith-Nilson says, her group is discerning in offering aid. She says she is constantly saying no to other organizations that want the group’s help with paying for projects.

“It’s not that these organizations have bad intentions or are corrupt,” she says, “but they are not as good as they need to be to implement projects that are going to last.”

Water projects, she says, are “notorious for failure” because so many things can go wrong, including failure to train people with the plumbing skills needed to fix water systems if they break, trouble collecting fees to maintain the water source, and difficulty finding spare parts for pumps or wells.

Water 1st tries to ensure success by building maintenance training into its projects, and involving villagers in the earliest stage of the planning process, to ensure it has wide support.

“If you do a vaccine project, you just need to give people shots and it’s done,” says Ms. Smith-Nilson. “But water, it has to work every day.”

The charity also trains local people, usually women, to educate residents about good hygiene, including washing hands before eating.

Changing residents’ behavior could take years, but it is worth the effort, says Ms. Smith-Nilson: “You get the biggest impact when you do all three: clean water, latrines, and hygiene education.”