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An average well has a cost of $5,500 and our target number of users is 300 people. This gives us an initial completed cost of $18.33 per person. With proper care and maintenance, this well will easily provide water for several decades. On average, major repairs such as a pump replacement are not required for 15 years. This means that over the course of those 15 years, the cost per user per year is $1.22. The longer the pump is in use, the lower the overall daily cost per user.
We welcome the passion of those who have asked “What about Canada’s First Nations communities that don’t have safe drinking water?” It’s a very good question. The United Nations has stated safe drinking water is a basic human right, but not everyone in Canada or internationally has access to it.
At Lifewater, we focus on communities in parts of the world where governments lack funding and capacity, where there is limited access to basic technology such as drilling rigs, and where simple, cost-effective solutions like hand-powered pumps are welcomed and can be affordably maintained by locals. Thus, the official objects that Lifewater has filed with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) say we will focus our safe water efforts in the developing world.
Meanwhile, safe drinking water continues to be a very pressing issue for many of Canada’s Indigenous communities, and yet our nation has the tools, expertise, and capacity to solve this. We believe the solution lies in government leadership, political will, cooperation, and community ownership of the issues we face in our own nation. Our government needs to understand that millions of Canadians care about safe water in our Indigenous communities. As citizens, we can — and should — speak out.
If you wish to support water projects benefiting Canada’s Indigenous people, please do some online research to identify your options. One is Water First, a Canadian organization providing internships that give Indigenous people the expertise to operate water treatment facilities. Water First also collaborates with Indigenous communities to protect water quality by restoring natural habitat.
Thousands of children and adults are dying every day because their drinking water is polluted. Each of them matters. There is no time to debate who should be responsible, or how we define the place we call “home.”
The biggest challenge that our teams face is equipment related. While we strive to equip teams with the most reliable and robust equipment, that also means that there are times that breakdowns create delays in drilling while waiting for replacement parts. Supply lines and international shipping can be time consuming, so while a drilling rig is down, teams may shift focus to other project types, such as repairs and rehabilitations. A drill rig in need of repair easily impacts project numbers of multiple different types.
The other significant challenge is funding. Historically, we have occasionally run short of funds and had to wait for donations to complete a project, but have worked diligently both with donors and teams to ensure steady and predictable work. In recent years we have implemented systems and practices that allow our partner teams to maintain a consistent number of water projects throughout each fiscal year.
We have set a target of 300 users per well. In the past we saw numbers as low as 50 or as high as 1000, with this measurement coming from observation and community surveys. As it proved to be a near impossible task to limit the number of users on a well to 300 when it was the only safe water source in a community, we began measuring population, calculating water needs, and drilling enough wells in a single community to keep the users on an individual well as close to our target of 300 users as possible. We intentionally address all a community’s WASH needs before moving to the next community. In this way, we can see maximum pump life while minimizing wait times and social disruptions.
This is a very important issue, one that we continually work hard to address. The life-saving health benefits of a safe drinking water supply are lost if a pump breaks down and people revert to traditionally unsafe sources. We address this problem in several ways:
In 1994, Jim Gehrels, co-founder of Lifewater Canada, met a pastor from Liberia who said it was pointless to talk to people about the love of God when they are suffering and dying because they lack something as basic as safe drinking water.
Jim was moved enough to use his training and experience as an Ontario government hydrogeologist to go to Liberia to help that pastor. God also inspired other people, putting a burden for West Africa on their hearts, and this has kept the program going and helped it expand over time.
For the last 30+ years, we have continued to keep our focus in regions where we know and understand the culture, people, climate, and geology. As we exclusively use handpumps that can easily be maintained at a village level, we must also work in regions that we know we can access safe water from 75-300 feet. This helps us keep our drilling costs down and enables us to help many villages in need.
Using the lessons we learned in Liberia, we have expanded into several other nations with similar climate and geology, including Nigeria, Kenya, and Haiti. While expansion does bring with it some challenges logistically, the benefits of the economies of scale help us maintain costs and overhead, ensuring that donor dollars have the greatest possible impact.
We are always willing to carefully consider a new nation, and do have a long term strategic plan that guides our decision making process for working in new nations.
Normally once or twice a year, teams of volunteer professionals from North America travel overseas to providing advanced training to our drilling teams to improve their methods and efficiency.
In recent years, our teams in African nations began visiting each other to provide valuable training. These sessions led by North American volunteers and/or African teams cover a wide variety of topics including drilling techniques, logistics, equipment maintenance, documentation, and record keeping.
Each of our teams use drilling rigs that are specifically designed to work in their region. These designs account for local geology and infrastructure, being small and agile to access difficult areas, in some cases even light enough to be carried beyond where roads end.
We maintain an inventory of drilling and pump equipment and supplies in each nation to minimize downtime waiting for replacement parts and reduce the time spent gathering supplies for each project. We also focus on grouping projects regionally to minimize travel times and increase efficiency.
Volunteers from Canada and the U.S. travel overseas to audit projects to ensure they are completed and providing value. We have project evaluation forms to quantify project benefits, but the forms are only as good as the data we can collect. Health data from medical clinics is often non-existent and we need to rely on infant death statistics as reported to us by villagers. There is clearly a pattern of significant health improvements after wells and latrines are built, but these are often difficult to objectively substantiate.
We have observed that the life-saving health benefits of a safe drinking water supply are lost if a pump breaks down and people revert to using traditionally unsafe sources. We are continuously developing ways to improve long-term maintenance and we expect villages to provide labour for new wells so villagers have a sense of ownership.
This can be difficult when many large non-government organizations provide everything without cost. However, we have learned that if villagers are willing to contribute “up front,” they will contribute when the pump inevitably needs repairs.
We receive significant donations from families, schools, and church groups in the U.S., U.K., Netherlands, and Australia. In recent years, approximately 10% of our revenue has come from international donors.
Our work with our overseas partners is governed by two agreements that we maintain with each partner, reviewed every fiscal year, and on an “as needed” basis:
Yes. We welcome donations of Canadian and U.S securities. If you need assistance with the process, please email us (info@lifewater.ca).
Well sites are identified in two ways. Normally, we allow our local workers to select drilling sites. They receive many requests and prioritize them according to need. In general, clinics, children’s homes, and schools without safe water are our highest priority.
When we drill community wells, we engage villagers in selecting the site. It must be accessible to everyone – meaning not on private land.
Sometimes we are contacted by people, non-profit groups, service clubs, or other organizations wishing to have a well drilled at a specific location. These are assessed on a case by case basis and it is determined with the local teams if it is possible to complete that project. Any additional costs are assessed and passed on to the requesting organization.
Yes. Lifewater Canada respects individuals’ privacy and are committed to keeping personal information accurate, confidential, secure, and private. Details are summarized in our Privacy Policy.
Most wells are completed in five days. The actual drilling is often done in 1-2 days. However, it can take months in advance to ensure a village has received health and hygiene training, and is mobilized to work.
In shallow African aquifers, bio-fouling and chemical precipitation may limit the life of some wells, but most should last decades or centuries! When wells stop being used, it is usually because users have moved away (such as a decommissioned refugee camp), handpumps break down (they need basic maintenance every 6 to 36 months), natural groundwater quality is unpleasant (high iron staining, sulfur rotten egg smells, etc.), or the wells were improperly constructed.
There are usually far more construction problems with wells that are dug by hand rather than drilled by machine. The problems include the wells being too shallow (so they empty during dry season) or having poor annular seals (surface contamination makes water unsafe to drink).
The Canada-U.S. tax treaty allows Lifewater to directly issue tax receipts to U.S. citizens, but the receipts can be used only to offset Canadian income. However, if you are a U.S. donor wanting a receipt but have no Canadian income to offset and intend to use the receipt for your U.S. filing to offset U.S. income, you can donate to Lifewater Canada through Friends of the Great Commission, a U.S.-registered charity that can collect donations on our behalf and issue U.S. receipts for donations by U.S. citizens. Go to Friends of the Great Commission.
Overseas trips occur once or twice a year and involve small groups of volunteers (3-6 people). Our focus is on helping train and equip the local community to care for themselves. While a few repeat donors are welcome on each trip, most spots on the team are reserved for volunteers with professional expertise in subject areas for which local workers are seeking more training. Volunteers wishing to travel overseas should consider the following facts:
