WELL AWARE

By providing reliable access to clean water, we drop anchor for development. We are deeply committed to building lasting water sources that become an anchor for community prosperity—providing Clean Water for Life. This enables our partner communities to thrive, grow, and develop for generations to come.

Nearly 60% of clean water projects in Africa fail within the first year due to lack of technical expertise and community involvement. Thatʼs where we are different. Well Aware is committed to maintaining a 100% success rate across all of our projects -- ensuring each water system is functioning and providing lasting clean water to its respective community. This is critical to ensuring long-lasting impact and sustainable development for our partner communities.

Well Awareʼs clean water systems trigger a ripple effect within our partner communities, enabling stability and growth that allows communities to thrive:

Diseases plummet by 64%. Access to clean water, along with better sanitation and hygiene practices causes waterborne illnesses to plummet, improving the overall health of communities.

Education increases by 34% on average, and 58% for girls specifically, once kids can stop missing school due to waterborne illnesses or the time spent walking for water. Clean water infrastructure in schools also allows girls reaching puberty to stay in school by having a place to wash up when needed.

Gender equality increases. Educated girls earn higher incomes, are less likely to marry young, and are empowered to build better futures for themselves. Women can also gain jobs and stronger voices in their communities when they can spend less time walking for water.

Agriculture and commerce flourish. When there is reliable access to clean water, communities can plant more crops, which creates more jobs, stabilizes nutrition, and diversifies their income.

Economic activity increases. When there is less time spent worrying about water, there is more time to spend on economic development, job opportunities improve, and commerce grows.

Peace, stability, and growth. Clean water access can reduce tension and conflict that arises over resources, enabling communities to thrive, grow, and develop.

We believe our responsibility to our partner communities goes far beyond the drilling of a hole. From planning to implementation, we adapt each water project according to the goals of our partner communities. Unlike other water charities that use blueprints to construct clean water systems, Well Aware applies a unique, community-focused approach. By utilizing existing resources and technical experts on the ground, we ensure long-term prosperity of all our water projects.

Our Well Beyond app, recognized as a finalist in Fast Companyʼs 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards, is the first and only patent-pending maintenance and diagnostics app for ensuring lasting water projects. The World Bank has estimated that less than 5% of water projects are visited after they are constructed, and less than 1% are monitored long-term. The Well Beyond app makes reliable, ongoing monitoring a reality. By allowing community members to diagnose, prevent, and solve issues on their own, the Well Beyond app lengthens the life span of water systems—resulting in significant community savings of time and money. The Well Beyond app also empowers our partner communities to take ownership of their clean water systems, while finding comfort in the fact that we will continue to be by their side to provide ongoing support and that clean water will continue to flow for years to come.

With our approach, Well Awareʼs clean water systems trigger a ripple effect of impact that spans future generations. Reliable access to clean water positively affects the health of our partner communities, education, gender equality, agriculture, economic development, and overall growth and stability.

100% success is not easy to come by. It requires innovation, expertise, adaptability, conscientiousness, and a commitment to the long-term success of our partner communities. 100% success is only achievable due to our robust sustainability model.

HERE’S WHAT MAKES WELL AWARE’S APPROACH DIFFERENT:
We have a team of technical experts including hydro-geologists, civil engineers and groundwater engineers who manage, plan, and design our projects from start to finish.
We are community-driven. From the very beginning, we establish a true, collaborative partnership with each community. They present to us what their current water situation is, what their goals are, and how they plan to manage the project. From there, we work with the community to design a water system that will utilize their existing resources to kick-start long-term success.
We maintain partnerships and support ongoing water system needs to ensure the longevity of all of our water projects. While most of our communities are now self-sustaining, we regularly check in on our water systems to measure impact and our local team is reachable for problems that arise.

In addition to Well Aware’s innovative approach, we utilize new technologies to make our work more efficient and cost-effective, including: solar power, purification, water kiosk technology, and mobile-to-mobile banking.

Since 2008, all of Well Awareʼs 100+ projects maintain a 100% success rate—providing clean water to more than 348,000 people across Kenya and Tanzania.

Well Aware has been hard at work bolstering our project capacity and growing our team so that we can reach more and more communities annually. In the past three years alone, the organization has doubled our funding, more than doubled the team in Kenya, and tripled our number of projects completed per year! Since our first water well in 2010, we have gone from two volunteers to 14 full-time staff.

In 2022 alone, more than 50,000 people in East Africa gained access to clean water for life We actively worked on 38 water projects in 2022, completing 25 new projects – 3 new wells, 13 new rainwater systems, and 9 upgrades and expansions. We also worked on 13 additional projects, including maintenance on past projects and investigation of new projects for future implementation.

In 2021 and 2022, we added a hydrogeologist, project associate, and operations manager to our team in Kenya. Our team there is now officially bigger than our team in our Austin headquarters! And because of these great achievements, we hit our 100th project in March of this year and are quickly progressing toward 150 projects.

At the rate that our team and project bandwidth is growing, we are also keenly aware of the need to uphold the integrity of all of our clean water systems so that we can continue to ensure our promise and commitment to 100% success. That’s where our Well Beyond App comes in – the industry’s first and only patent-pending mobile app for water system maintenance and diagnostics. As we continue to scale, it is critical to further empower local leaders with the tools they need to ensure clean water can flow for decades to come. The Well Beyond App provides that opportunity. Now, communities don’t have to wait days or weeks for repairs without their only source of water. Through the app, community members receive checklists and questionnaires to perform regular maintenance needs and help resolve small issues. They can also chat with our experts in real-time for quick assistance or to discuss larger challenges. We are proud to report that the Well Beyond App is now deployed in over 70 of our partner communities! Already we have seen many problems solved quickly and efficiently, or avoided altogether – lengthening the life of our water systems and saving both time and money.

Now, as we look to the future, we have big plans to further scale our team to accommodate the growing impact Well Aware is pursuing.