Give to Gain: How Water Changes Everything for Women
This International Women’s Day, women from The Water Project’s team and partner organizations in Western Kenya share what it truly means to give, and what we all stand to gain.
This March 8th, the world celebrates International Women’s Day under the theme “Give to Gain” and for the women working alongside The Water Project across Western Kenya, those three words are not just a slogan. They’re a lived reality, written in the hours saved, the businesses started, and the futures unlocked every time clean water flows into a community.
Water Is the First Gift
“Women and water are inseparable,” writes Jacklyne Chelagat, The Water Project’s Impact Communications Officer. “When we give water to women, we give life, good health, and empowerment.”
It sounds simple. But the ripple effects are anything but.
For communities across Kakamega, Vihiga, and beyond, the arrival of a clean water point (whether a borehole, a spring, or a rainwater harvesting tank) doesn’t just solve a logistical problem. It rewrites the terms of daily life for women and girls, giving back time, dignity, and possibility.
The Water Project gives with an
Jacklyne Chelagat, Impact Communications Officer
open heart and with cupped hands out front.
The Gift of Showing Up
Lillian Achieng’ knows this firsthand. A Field Officer with WeWaSaFo, one of The Water Project’s trusted implementing partners, Lillian traverses communities across Western Kenya ensuring that safe water reaches those who need it most.
“My joy as a woman is being fulfilled by seeing smiles that come from fellow women and children who are receiving clean and safe water,” she says. “This may look so obvious to someone who has always had easily accessible and clean water all their lives, but for these communities, this is always a dream come true.”
For Lillian, giving her time and energy also means receiving something in return. She speaks of learning beekeeping from community members, and being gifted fruits, vegetables, and honey as tokens of gratitude.
“The world is a better place when we give and keep giving, especially as women,” she reflects. “Indeed, there is so much gain when we give.” That spirit of mutual exchange is at the heart of everything The Water Project does.
Beyond the Borehole
Patience Njeri, a Field Officer working in Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) across Western Kenya, puts it plainly: giving, in this field, is never a one-way street. It is, in her words, “a calculated investment in the dignity of our sisters and the future of our daughters.”
When her team enters a community, they bring more than technical expertise. They bring presence: showing up in spaces where decisions are too often made by those who have never carried a 20-liter jerrycan on their heads. They bring advocacy: breaking the silence around menstrual hygiene so that “sanitation” isn’t just about toilets, but about a girl’s right to stay in school with her head held high. And they bring technical resilience: ensuring the infrastructure built today becomes a lasting source of life, not an abandoned promise.
“In the heart of Western Kenya, we know that water is life,” Patience writes. “But as women in WASH, we know that managed water is liberty.”
What We Gain
Patience identifies three gains she has witnessed firsthand, and each one builds on the last.
The first is time and agency. When a community receives a water point within 500 meters, mothers reclaim hours from their days, hours that become a small business, a garden, a chance to breathe. “We gain a mother who can finally start that small business because she isn’t spending four hours a day walking to the river,” she writes.
The second is health and dignity. When proper sanitation reaches a rural health clinic, families gain safer conditions for childbirth and freedom from the waterborne diseases that once drained their savings and robbed children of their health.
The third gain, and perhaps the greatest, is the next generation. When a girl in a rural primary school finally has a private, clean latrine, she can attend school every day of the month. “We gain a future doctor, engineer, or perhaps the next woman leader in water development,” Patience writes.
Taken together, her point is clear. “Giving is not a subtraction,” adds Jacklyne Chelagat. “It’s intentional multiplication.”
When You Give, We All Gain
This International Women’s Day, The Water Project celebrates every woman who gives: the field officers who show up day after day, the communities who maintain their water points, the trainers who pass on knowledge, and the donors whose generosity makes all of it possible.
Because when you give water to a woman, you don’t just change her life. You change her family. Her community. Her children’s children.
Give to Gain. Give water. Gain everything.
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