

St. Mary’s Primary School
Water Project
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Nelson hopes to become a doctor so that he can be a role model for other children in his community.
- Story
- Plan
- FAQ's
Life at St. Mary’s Primary: Nelson’s Story
September 2019
Nelson Waigolo is only 11 years old, but he is wise beyond his years. One day, he wants to become a doctor so he can help the sick and inspire other children in his village and surrounding communities.
Administrators and teachers at St. Mary’s Primary School are doing all they can to make it possible for students to excel, but students are in great need of safe water. And, without proper sanitation and hygiene, sickness is rampant.
“My dream is to become a doctor someday to help treat the many patients we have here,” Nelson said.
St. Mary’s Primary School doesn’t have its own water supply, so students walk 40 minutes one way to draw water from a community well when they are thirsty. To reach the shared water source, Nelson and his friends cross a busy road, risking accident and injury every time.
Because the water source is so far away, teachers must send students to gather water during class.
“The greatest challenge we face is that when we send the pupils for water and they miss classes, their performance drops, a demotivating factor for parents,” Headmaster Kimbagaya said.
With failing grades and sick children, parents often pull them from school. For girls, the lack of sufficient bathrooms on campus means they miss entire weeks of class during their menstrual cycles, and they are even less likely to finish primary eight than their male peers.
“I would like to be among the role models that encourage parents to keep their children in school,” Nelson said.
Nelson hopes that when he becomes a doctor, he can make enough money to build his parents a new home. With safe water, he can concentrate on his studies.
You can help Nelson and others at St. Mary’s Primary School today. Your gift will provide health training, menstrual hygiene management curriculum, permanent and sanitary bathrooms on school grounds, plus a new, safe water source just steps from the classroom.
Lasting change means more than building a well. Compelled by the love of Christ, local Lifewater staff work alongside parents, teachers, and administrators to ensure the students of today and tomorrow have a path out of poverty.
Sponsor St. Mary’s Primary School today.
Here’s the Plan for St. Mary’s Primary School:

School Project Ready
Schools are carefully selected by Lifewater staff based on need, geographical location, and willingness to participate in water access, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs.
Healthy School Achieved
The school becomes a certified “Healthy School” once the following are all in place: an active WASH Club, MHM training, a safe water source, and safe bathrooms for the entire school. It is a moment of great accomplishment!

FAQs
With more than 40 years’ experience, LIfewater is the longest-running Christian clean water charity in North America. Over those 40 years, Lifewater has worked in more than 45 different countries. Currently, our work is focused in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania) and Southeast Asia (Cambodia).
Lifewater identifies countries and regions that are unreached and underserved with basic water access and sanitation, which means we focus on areas where other organizations are not serving.
Although great strides have been made in the past 20 years to solve the global water crisis, remote and rural populations still remain unreached with adequate water and sanitation. These distant regions are difficult and often costly for governments and NGOs to serve well. Many of these communities feel as though they have been forgotten.
When you sponsor a school water project, you are helping to bring change now and for generations to come. Your gift provides:
- Custom-engineered and constructed safe water source on school grounds
- Permanent restrooms for every child, teacher, and administrator
- Rainwater storage tanks and hand washing stations for improved hygiene
- School-wide hygiene and sanitation training
- The formation of a WASH Club of student leaders to reinforce healthy practices
- Menstruation Hygiene Management (MHM) training to reduce stigma and create a safer space for everyone to learn
- Monitoring and evaluation of the project with real-time updates to donors
- Five-year water source maintenance and sustainability promise
Lifewater budgets 80% of expenditures for programs. The remaining 20% is split between administrative/management and fundraising expenses. This ratio is best in class for nonprofits and is why Lifewater has received the highest rating from Charity Navigator.
Administrative/management expenses are used to ensure that we are effective in managing the funds entrusted to us and include the following types of expenses: accounting personnel, leadership time, professional development of staff, external auditors, legal counsel, government registration expenses in every U.S. state, credit card fees for processing donations, bank fees, database maintenance, and office expenses.Fundraising expenses generate the income needed to do the work that we set out to do. These include the cost of direct mail appeals and communication, marketing projects, donor relations personnel, and email communication systems. Last year, every dollar invested into Lifewater fundraising efforts resulted in $10 of donation for the organization.
Lifewater’s work is founded on the belief that every person is made in the image of God. It is with this conviction that we seek out the globe’s most unreached, marginalized people groups in need of safe water.
Both nationally and internationally, 100 percent of our staff are Christians. These Christian staff help facilitate Lifewater’s Healthy Church strategy in communities. And, where there are no churches, we work with church planting partners to start new churches.
To create Healthy Churches, Lifewater first trains church leaders in foundational theology. These leaders are equipped with the basic story of the Christian faith and the biblical mandate to love others. Leaders learn that stopping the spread of disease and caring for the vulnerable aligns with our responsibility as Christians to love our neighbor.
Second, Lifewater ensures churches have safe bathrooms on their premises, handwashing stations, clean water nearby, and the education to promote health within their congregations. It’s imperative that churches are early adopters of healthy hygiene practices. Third, Lifewater encourages churches to help vulnerable households become Healthy Homes. Church leaders undergo a training to become WASH (water access, sanitation, and hygiene) advocates in their communities. These advocates are encouraged to identify widows, child-headed households, the elderly, and the disabled to help them meet the health standards of Lifewater’s programs.
Lifewater’s Vision of a Healthy Village strategy is a relationship-first method. This model transforms entire regions house by house, village by village, and school by school. It is among the most intensive household-level work happening in the entire developing world and is closely tracked for progress, sustainability, and overall impact.
We construct custom-engineered safe water sources and teach life-saving health and sanitation practices in local villages and schools in need.
Currently, Lifewater has programs in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Cambodia. You can go to lifewater.org/projects to select a specific water project to help. Because our programs are regionalized and made in partnership with the local governments, we are not able to take requests for specific water projects outside of our existing programs.
Lifewater has local staff that live and serve among the communities and schools where Lifewater works. Our staff know the language and the culture and are best equipped to serve communities. We do not allow donors to visit the projects they sponsor but we do commit to sending real-time updates from the projects themselves and a follow-up story gathered by one of our local journalists once your water project is complete.
Story
Life at St. Mary’s Primary: Nelson’s Story
September 2019
Nelson Waigolo is only 11 years old, but he is wise beyond his years. One day, he wants to become a doctor so he can help the sick and inspire other children in his village and surrounding communities.
Administrators and teachers at St. Mary’s Primary School are doing all they can to make it possible for students to excel, but students are in great need of safe water. And, without proper sanitation and hygiene, sickness is rampant.
“My dream is to become a doctor someday to help treat the many patients we have here,” Nelson said.
St. Mary’s Primary School doesn’t have its own water supply, so students walk 40 minutes one way to draw water from a community well when they are thirsty. To reach the shared water source, Nelson and his friends cross a busy road, risking accident and injury every time.
Because the water source is so far away, teachers must send students to gather water during class.
“The greatest challenge we face is that when we send the pupils for water and they miss classes, their performance drops, a demotivating factor for parents,” Headmaster Kimbagaya said.
With failing grades and sick children, parents often pull them from school. For girls, the lack of sufficient bathrooms on campus means they miss entire weeks of class during their menstrual cycles, and they are even less likely to finish primary eight than their male peers.
“I would like to be among the role models that encourage parents to keep their children in school,” Nelson said.
Nelson hopes that when he becomes a doctor, he can make enough money to build his parents a new home. With safe water, he can concentrate on his studies.
You can help Nelson and others at St. Mary’s Primary School today. Your gift will provide health training, menstrual hygiene management curriculum, permanent and sanitary bathrooms on school grounds, plus a new, safe water source just steps from the classroom.
Lasting change means more than building a well. Compelled by the love of Christ, local Lifewater staff work alongside parents, teachers, and administrators to ensure the students of today and tomorrow have a path out of poverty.
Sponsor St. Mary’s Primary School today.
Plan
Here’s the Plan for St. Mary’s Primary School:

School Project Ready
Schools are carefully selected by Lifewater staff based on need, geographical location, and willingness to participate in water access, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs.
Healthy School Achieved
The school becomes a certified “Healthy School” once the following are all in place: an active WASH Club, MHM training, a safe water source, and safe bathrooms for the entire school. It is a moment of great accomplishment!

FAQ's
FAQs
With more than 40 years’ experience, LIfewater is the longest-running Christian clean water charity in North America. Over those 40 years, Lifewater has worked in more than 45 different countries. Currently, our work is focused in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania) and Southeast Asia (Cambodia).
Lifewater identifies countries and regions that are unreached and underserved with basic water access and sanitation, which means we focus on areas where other organizations are not serving.
Although great strides have been made in the past 20 years to solve the global water crisis, remote and rural populations still remain unreached with adequate water and sanitation. These distant regions are difficult and often costly for governments and NGOs to serve well. Many of these communities feel as though they have been forgotten.
When you sponsor a school water project, you are helping to bring change now and for generations to come. Your gift provides:
- Custom-engineered and constructed safe water source on school grounds
- Permanent restrooms for every child, teacher, and administrator
- Rainwater storage tanks and hand washing stations for improved hygiene
- School-wide hygiene and sanitation training
- The formation of a WASH Club of student leaders to reinforce healthy practices
- Menstruation Hygiene Management (MHM) training to reduce stigma and create a safer space for everyone to learn
- Monitoring and evaluation of the project with real-time updates to donors
- Five-year water source maintenance and sustainability promise
Lifewater budgets 80% of expenditures for programs. The remaining 20% is split between administrative/management and fundraising expenses. This ratio is best in class for nonprofits and is why Lifewater has received the highest rating from Charity Navigator.
Administrative/management expenses are used to ensure that we are effective in managing the funds entrusted to us and include the following types of expenses: accounting personnel, leadership time, professional development of staff, external auditors, legal counsel, government registration expenses in every U.S. state, credit card fees for processing donations, bank fees, database maintenance, and office expenses.Fundraising expenses generate the income needed to do the work that we set out to do. These include the cost of direct mail appeals and communication, marketing projects, donor relations personnel, and email communication systems. Last year, every dollar invested into Lifewater fundraising efforts resulted in $10 of donation for the organization.
Lifewater’s work is founded on the belief that every person is made in the image of God. It is with this conviction that we seek out the globe’s most unreached, marginalized people groups in need of safe water.
Both nationally and internationally, 100 percent of our staff are Christians. These Christian staff help facilitate Lifewater’s Healthy Church strategy in communities. And, where there are no churches, we work with church planting partners to start new churches.
To create Healthy Churches, Lifewater first trains church leaders in foundational theology. These leaders are equipped with the basic story of the Christian faith and the biblical mandate to love others. Leaders learn that stopping the spread of disease and caring for the vulnerable aligns with our responsibility as Christians to love our neighbor.
Second, Lifewater ensures churches have safe bathrooms on their premises, handwashing stations, clean water nearby, and the education to promote health within their congregations. It’s imperative that churches are early adopters of healthy hygiene practices. Third, Lifewater encourages churches to help vulnerable households become Healthy Homes. Church leaders undergo a training to become WASH (water access, sanitation, and hygiene) advocates in their communities. These advocates are encouraged to identify widows, child-headed households, the elderly, and the disabled to help them meet the health standards of Lifewater’s programs.
Lifewater’s Vision of a Healthy Village strategy is a relationship-first method. This model transforms entire regions house by house, village by village, and school by school. It is among the most intensive household-level work happening in the entire developing world and is closely tracked for progress, sustainability, and overall impact.
We construct custom-engineered safe water sources and teach life-saving health and sanitation practices in local villages and schools in need.
Currently, Lifewater has programs in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Cambodia. You can go to lifewater.org/projects to select a specific water project to help. Because our programs are regionalized and made in partnership with the local governments, we are not able to take requests for specific water projects outside of our existing programs.
Lifewater has local staff that live and serve among the communities and schools where Lifewater works. Our staff know the language and the culture and are best equipped to serve communities. We do not allow donors to visit the projects they sponsor but we do commit to sending real-time updates from the projects themselves and a follow-up story gathered by one of our local journalists once your water project is complete.
Your gift reflects your trust in Lifewater International. We commit to honor your generosity by using your gift to help further the mission and vision of Lifewater International. Your donation is used by Lifewater International according to the project objectives to provide safe drinking water and improved sanitation and hygiene within the specified program area. Lifewater International is a charitable organization as described in 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, registered in the United States. All donations are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law.
Donations are non-refundable. Lifewater International will honor a donor’s request for any pre-approved program or project whenever possible. In rare occasions where this is not possible, gifts will be used where needed, in accordance with the organization’s charitable purpose. In accordance with this policy, donor’s explicitly release Lifewater International from further restriction on such funds.
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