By Tom Webber | U.S. Development Director
In the past quarter, BridgIT Water Foundation completed the first well refurbishment under this new crowdfunding campaign. Repairing the broken well at Thimmareddygaripalle Village will greatly improve the lives of its 675 residents. Thank you to our fantastic philanthropic funders without whom BridgIT could not do its economic development work.
BridgIT's Founding Director, Wendy Tisdell, OAM, recently returned from her first post-COVID trip to Andhra Pradesh. Getting back to India to meet and confer with the implementing partners, SPREAWS (for these refurb wells) and SRHED (for newly drilled wells) was so important to view the wells, meet the beneficiaries, and continue BridgIT's partner capacity-building work.
The men, women, and children in Thimmareddygaripalli Village reported to the partnering field team that they have been walking 3kms, consuming hours per day, to get water from farm borewells on the village outskirts. This water is unclean and contaminated and the people have no choice but to consume it which is causing waterborne diseases, especially to children.
In the selected village, the people mainly relied on a groundwater borewell for their daily water needs. The existing borewell in Thimmaareddygaripalli Village was in non-working order, due to broken hand pumps and GI pipes. This is because in the past, the government officials have simply come in with a drill team, drilled a well, and left. Community members were not given any ownership or guidance on water management strategies or how to responsibly maintain the borewell. This situation is fairly typical that when the hand pump eventually needs repair, the communities are unable to do so because they have no knowledge on how to maintain the borewell, or financial resources for the repairs.
The selected village had not recieved any government support to repair their borewell and meet the water scarcity needs of the people due to a growing population and a deficit in government's budget capacity. Hence SPREAWS proposed to refurbish the old and broken borewell and restore it to working condition. Providing refurbishment to this nonfunctioning borewell provides safe drinking water to this impoverished community.
Additional donations to this crowdfunding campaign will help many more rural villagers restore clean safe water, and greatlly improve people's health. Therefore BridgIT will continue this India Water Crisis Well Refurbishment Program so it can repair more broken wells in rural Andhra Pradesh villages, and improve life for people living in the Dalit communities.
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