Every Drop Counts: How Clean Water Is Changing Daily Life in Tigray

Recent updates from WellWishers and REST show how community-owned wells are improving health, saving time and creating new possibilities for families in northern Ethiopia.

For families in the Serdi Kahnat community in Tigray, Ethiopia, collecting water once meant relying on seasonal ponds and exposed surface-water sources that could be contaminated by runoff and human and animal waste.

When those sources dried up, people had to travel further to find alternatives. The daily task of fetching water consumed time and energy, particularly for women and girls, while unsafe sources increased the risk of diseases including diarrhoea and other waterborne infections.

For 25-year-old mother of three Mulubrhan Halefom, those risks became painfully real.

She remembers having to walk for more than an hour to collect water and spending 2,000 Ethiopian birr treating her first-born child for diarrhoea.

“Day and night, I worried about collecting water,” she recalled.

Today, a new hand-dug well has changed that daily reality.

A water point serving more than 200 people

The Serdi Kahnat water point now serves 45 households, representing around 225 people.

According to the latest update received by B1G1, easier access to clean water is allowing children to reach school on time more consistently and giving families more opportunity to devote their time to income-generating and household activities. Women and girls, traditionally responsible for much of the water collection, have benefited particularly from the reduction in the time required to find water.

The project is implemented locally by REST, the Relief Society of Tigray, in partnership with WellWishers.

The WellWishers programme has now helped provide village water supplies in more than 1,100 Ethiopian communities over the past two decades.

Community ownership from the beginning

An important aspect of the WellWishers and REST approach is that communities are not passive recipients of a completed well.

Local residents contribute labour and materials during construction and establish water and sanitation committees responsible for the ongoing management of the water point. Committee members receive training in maintenance and bookkeeping so that communities can manage repairs and keep the water source functioning over time.

That ownership can already be seen at Serdi Kahnat. Residents have fenced the water point, appointed a guard and raised more than 3,000 Ethiopian birr towards future maintenance. The community has also organised water collection into morning and afternoon periods to manage access to the well.

Mulubrhan remembers taking part in discussions before construction began and being determined to support the project.

“We volunteered to support any efforts to protect this resource as if it is our own eyes,” she said.

Restoring access in other communities

The most recent documentation also includes updates from several other water points supported through the programme.

At Cholak, a hand-dug well originally constructed in 2009 stopped functioning in 2022. Before its rehabilitation, 58 households — around 355 people — had no functioning community water source and were again required to walk long distances to unprotected water shared with livestock and other animals. The update reports frequent waterborne illness, particularly among children and older people.

At Mai Ayni, a well built in 2014 and rehabilitated in 2025 now serves 30 households, or approximately 150 people. Before the repair work, residents had been forced to seek water elsewhere, often from dirty and contaminated sources.

A further new well is being constructed at Zban Serawat, where 40 households — approximately 200 people — are expected to benefit. Before construction began, families were travelling considerable distances to collect water from unprotected sources shared with animals. The well began construction in June 2026 and is expected to be completed by the end of September.

These are just a few examples among many more wells constructed or refurbished over the years.

Together, these communities illustrate an important aspect of water access that can easily be overlooked. The impact of a functioning well extends considerably beyond the water itself.

When clean water is closer to home, families reduce their exposure to disease. Women and children can regain hours previously spent collecting water. Children have more opportunity to attend school consistently, and adults can devote more time to farming, earning an income and caring for their families.

How B1G1 giving becomes part of the story

For B1G1 members, an impact often begins somewhere very different.

It may start with a business deciding to give when it makes a sale, welcomes a new client, celebrates a milestone or simply chooses to contribute regularly to projects it cares about.

From the business end, that individual action can feel very small.

On the ground, however, those contributions combine with those of others and become resources that trusted organisations can turn into tangible outcomes.

A water point is one example of what can happen when many individual contributions come together.

The distance between clicking “give” and seeing water flow from a pump in a rural Ethiopian community may be thousands of kilometres, and the process itself can take months. Stories, photographs and videos such as these help close that distance.

Perhaps the two photographs of Mulubrhan show it most simply.

In one, she stands beside the unsafe water source her family previously depended on.

In another, she is smiling beside the new pump.

For every B1G1 member who contributed to this project and to clean-water initiatives like it, that transformation is also part of your giving story.

Mulubrhan expressed her appreciation simply:

“Thank you for constructing the water point. Your support has changed our lives.”

Every contribution may begin as something small.

But every drop counts.