Most of us take many things for granted, until they disappear. Water for example. It’s not until you experience first-hand how a shortage impacts your life that you can begin to understand what it is like to live without adequate clean water every day.

In California, the past two years have shown dramatically how precious water is. While there have been shortages before, this drought has left entire communities without water. Unlike Haiti where this is often the norm, Californians have access to bottled water, often provided by the state for those in the worst need. In Haiti, women and children must walk for miles every day, carrying vessels weighing 20 or 30 pounds each when full, simply to bring clean water to their families.
The responses to a survey by REDDIT underscored the global need for water. It asked people who had immigrated to America, “What was the most pleasant surprise?” Several of the top responses focused on water:
* Showers and running hot water. I was born in the Philippines. Showers and hot water aren’t really common in older homes over there.
* Not having to fill buckets with water and boiling some over a stovetop was such a big surprise for me. Experiencing that as a twelve year old was unforgettable. Yet, most people who live here (me included) take it for granted sometimes.
* That the water that comes out of the tap is perfectly drinkable; a simple thing that’s easy to take for granted, but it’s amazing to me.
These responses say it all.

Water is life. We need water for our bodies to function properly. We need water to grow the food that sustains our bodies. And, we need water to keep clean and fight diseases.  When we have water, we have life. Without water, life diminishes.
Many of the children of Haiti, like those pictured here, are tasked with fetching the water for their homes and villages on a daily basis. The miracle is that for many of them, the clean water they get from our solar water wells is often the first clean water they have had access to, or that they’ve been able to bring home without spending literally the entire day walking to a well and back.

When we received these pictures showing the children with bright smiles on their faces as they filled water jugs for their trek home, we  could not have been more humbled and grateful to have been able to – with your support – build the wells that are making these smiles possible.  We are determined to build even more solar water wells in Haiti this year so we can continue to bring smiles and health to even more children and their families.

Please join us in our endeavor to continue providing this life-giving water through the construction of more solar powered water wells in Haiti. To learn how you can make a difference, please visit our website.
~Michael and Frida Donner