Addis Ababa

Project Background

We believe all human life comes from the Rift valley of Ethiopia. That is where the oldest human remains have been found. Ethiopia is a beautiful country with tremendous needs for help. Part of us thinks “if you’re going to help save humanity, begin where humanity first started”.

The first RAW Giving project was in Southern Ethiopia and was a deep bore water well in an area where there had been drought for years. The crops had all died, the animals had all died and the people were dying. The day we broke ground in our well it began raining and rained for 2 weeks straight until the well was completed. The locals believe the well is blessed, and maybe it is.

Our favorite project is the rebuilding and modernization of the well at Saint Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity (MoC) Center in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. This is a well in an 800+ person hospital for the very sick and destitute. There is a lot more information on our well below, but in short this is a project that years of government agencies and various NGO’s had be asked to do but never accomplished it.

It came down to us. We and our friends at Water is Life Ethiopia finally accomplished the task at hand. We put in a modern “super well” that is so deep and was installed with a special water storage system that it will surely fill all of the clean water needs of the hospital for many years to come. 

The best part is that this is pure clean water. There is so much more we’d like to say, but this page would become a novel. 

If you wanted to save lives for the long term, what would you do? This was the question posed by RAW founder Josh Kesselman to his philanthropic friend, who said “Water Josh, clean water is the nicest thing you can do for people and it can create long term better lives for people”. 

Across the globe, thousands of children – mostly under the age of five – die from water-related illnesses every year. This is why RAW teamed up with Wine to Water and Water is Life and now Senai to dig wells in Ethiopia. Mother Theresa’s Ministries of Charity in Addis is a “hospital of last resort” that houses around 800 people who are suffering at the greatest level imaginable. We knew that getting them clean water was extremely important. When I first saw the well, it was not in good condition at all. A nun explained that they use it whenever the city water goes out (which happens monthly) and they have to pail-fetch the water because the hand pump’s been broken for so long didn’t ever remember it working! As I walked away thinking of how to fix the well, I saw kids playing around a big red water truck on blocks. 

The ministry used the truck to supply water to outside communities in desperate need during droughts but the truck was in disrepair. So we pledged to get it into good shape – period. The well turned into our biggest project we had yet accomplished. First we set to repair the shallow well but learned that the water itself was contaminated – it had surface water full of runoff and human waste/debris from the surrounding city. So the project became to dig a new very deep 150 meter well to access fresh clean water. Because it’s so deep we had to install electric pumps. 

The electricity is sporadic so we helped create a system of pumping the water into large elevated storage tanks with many simple nuances to keep things running smooth and sustainable. It cost us a lot to do this project and worth every penny. This project alone has likely save and will continue to save many lives in the coming years. 

I was the kid that got thrown out of a high school for getting caught smoking in the Deans bathroom. Who would have thought that I’d get to where I’m at now!!