The main mission of The Water Project is to help communities gain access to clean and safe water. To achieve this, we protect natural springs, drill boreholes, construct rainwater harvesting tanks in schools, communities, and health centers, and build sand dams that capture rain when it comes. But we’ve learned over the years that construction […]

This is an installment in the ‘Still Reading the Handbook’ blog series featuring new members of our team. I’ve spent much of my career thinking about generosity. What moves us to give, what connects us to one another, and what makes us believe that something better is possible. Now, in my new role at The […]

This is an installment in the ‘Still Reading the Handbook’ blog series featuring new members of our team. “Welcome to the team!” I must have heard it a dozen times my first weeks at The Water Project. From colleagues. From the teams on the ground in Kenya and Uganda and Sierra Leone. Even from our […]

This is an installment in the ‘Still Reading the Handbook’ blog series featuring new members of our team. In the fall of 2025, I began the search for a new job. Though I cast a wide net, I knew in my heart that I wanted to join a non-profit organization. I felt like my work […]

There’s a photograph we take at the end of every project. Water coming out of a new pump. People gathered around it. Somebody laughing. Children splashing water. It’s a great photograph and we’re not going to stop taking it. But it captures an arrival, and the arrival is only half of what your giving does. […]

How many times have you felt sick and thought, “The only place I can get well is the hospital”? I walked to Mugai Health Center with confidence. The moment I entered the compound, the first thing I saw was a beautiful, well-kept borehole. The water point was clean. A community member was fetching water, and […]

“Water is like a child; it always wants to be in motion,” wrote Viraj Mahajan. We know water changes lives when it flows freely in homes, schools, and communities. When I joined The Water Project about six years ago as a Field Officer, I thought my job would be straightforward: equip communities with the knowledge […]

There’s a monster living in the toilet. It is deep inside the tank. Tiny, invisible, and always hungry. Its whole reason for existing is to eat, and what it eats is the waste we would rather not think about. Okay, in all seriousness: it’s not a monster. But it IS alive, and by the end […]

There is a path on the way to the river that has been walked for so long, nobody can remember who carved it. It’s too narrow for a vehicle. Too winding for an oxcart. It was made by feet, bare feet, mostly small ones carrying something. The path doesn’t know it’s becoming a relic. It […]

There’s a pig in Alice Andeso’s yard, and the pig is the point. The pig is also the part of the story we don’t usually tell. You probably know the story well: Donors fund a well. The well brings clean water. A child goes to school more easily, a household runs more cleanly, illness recedes. […]