In 2009 we brought water to 62 new places and believe that approximately 30,000 people are benefiting from our work this year. This brings our total number of fresh water projects since our inception to 380.

From a financial standpoint, Wells for Life® continues to be strong and again this year around 95% of your giving goes directly into project related expenses. More than ever your giving is actually making a difference in saving lives. If you are interested in a closer look at our 2009 990EZ click on the link that says 2009 IRS 990 which is located above the header of Water, water and more water at the top of this page. 

I know you have many choices when it comes to giving and I just want to personally say thank you for entrusting Wells for Life® with your gift. The reality continues to be without your help, people in the rural areas would continue to suffer various sicknesses and some may even die because they lack access to safe water.

This year the goal remains the same and that is to save lives!

To help us carry out our goal visit our homepage and select the Give Button at the top of this page.

Michael Viser

2009 990ez

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This isn’t to say I don’t get stuff done but outside of housework and dropping off and picking up the kids from school, oh yeah, and getting on an airplane, motivation is lacking when it comes to spending time on the ole computer getting things cranked out.  Maybe the problem is more of just starting that it is in finishing, even now I am getting somewhat excited, wait, I know, I need some extra motivation, hey, how about I treat myself to a scoop of ice cream this afternoon for every paragraph I type?  This sounds good but then that goes against my waist line and would upset the lack of motivation I have about going downstairs and exercising on the elliptical or hitting the weights.  I need something else to get me going, hmmm, maybe, well to be honest with you there isn’t anything that I want that I really should have so I guess I will just suffer, ok, keep typing I can do this.

Highlights…. In March I made several trips to Santa Rosa California and was awestruck at the difference a few can make.  BollywoodH20 was a huge success and it looks like we raised around $14,000 which will go a long way in providing water to some very thirsty places.  I capped off March with a trip down to Southern California and spoke in my cousin’s church and was greeted by a very warm response to the Wells for Life message and in turn the church was able to fund 2 water projects.  What was really special for me was to learn that a good percentage of what was raised was done so by the school age children and this by just collecting loose change and pestering Dad and Mom for the “green” stuff.

Making an impact in the world is really not all that difficult. 

People think they have to be big, powerful, wealthy, important or influential to make an impact and yet the reality is, they don’t, more specifically, you don’t.  Follow me…. One child in the States can find a way to earn, receive, or come upon some money very easily, say $20.  $20 to a kid may be a lot or maybe not much depending upon their age and the socio-economic status, regardless, coming upon $20 is fairly easy.  Now, take that $20 and give it to me.

 What can I do with it?

A lot.

I can change the course of life with just $20, actually, all I need is $3.

$3 is the average cost to bring water to a person in India.  $20 brings water to at least 6 people and then let’s say 7 as the 7^th can be a baby.

How do you change the world?  Very simply and very easily, you give to Wells for Life and you watch us turn your money into water.

Right now kids are changing history; they are getting involved with Wells for Life.  Kids at private Christian schools in Santa Ana and Costa Mesa, kids at public schools in Olathe, Lenexa, Shawnee and Overland Park, KS and not to mention kids in Sonoma County CA.

The Human Race in Sonoma County is happening next month and last year they raised enough money for 10 village water projects, this year they want to surpass that goal and I don’t see why they can’t accomplish it.  I am thrilled about what they are seeking to do and so much so I am taking my family out to Northern California next month to join them and the name of the team?  Team Running Well.  Get it?  Pretty clever huh.

You want to be involved?  Visit this link and donate.  http://humanrace.kintera.org/wellsforlife

 We’ll take what you give us and turn it into water, life changing water.  I dare you to give and when you do why not give big.  After all giving small helps a few but giving big helps many.

Take a clue from kids in KS and CA, make a difference in the world by giving a few dollars, but since you’re  and adult, why just give money like a kid, give like a grown man or woman and write a big check or input a big number on the Donate Now button.

Your gift is tax deductible and just imagine how many lives you can positively impact with your donation.  I promise, I will turn your money into life saving water.

One final thought, there are a group of men at Lansing Federal Correctional Facility that have turned their lives around and even in prison they are wanting to make a difference in the lives of the less fortunate, specifically in India by providing a dollar here and a dollar there.  Last Fall I had the chance to visit this prison and met these guys and told them firsthand about our work and was amazed to learn that they wanted to be involved.  Knowing that their earnings in prison are minimal and that it would take a long time for them to collectively come up with enough money to fund even 1 water project I decided to commit to them that Wells for Life or one of it donors would match their giving, dollar for dollar so as to get them to their goal of $1,500. 

What I am look for now is someone or a group of people who would be willing to partner with the guys from Lansing and see water come to India on their behalf.  If you would like to help in this regard send your gift with a memo attached stating it’s for the Lansing guys and I will make sure it get’s added with their money.  http://www.wellsforlife.org/get_involved/how-to-give/

 — Michael

           In order to provide and to promote secondary school education at the most backward rural area Infant Jesus High School was started in June 2002 by Millennium Educational and Environmental Trust. As there was no high school of any type within radius of 10Kms from the Village of Maravanur, the school enrollment has increased year after year.

            The school strength for the Academic year 2009-2010 is given below:

              All these students come from more than 40 villages and their parents are daily wages earners or cattle raisers. 42% of them are from Dalit families; 26% of them are from most backward families and the rest are from backward families. Education is freely given to all and we are committed to give quality education and holistic formation to these Children of God.

             Infant Jesus High School is a Tamil Medium School, recognized by the Government of Tamil Nadu. The Government gives free text books to all students, free noon – meal for 340 students and free bus pass for 360 students. Our X standard result is always above 92% and our service at this rural area is well appreciated.

            Water is life we say. Protected drinking water enhances health for all. Pure drinking water is essential for the normal growth and overall development of each student. The school had a bore well which provided water for drinking, Cooking, and washing. The bore well was in school ground and it’s was very near to NH 45. The Government is extending high ways on both sides of road, laying 4 ways which resulted in abolishing of the school bore well. We have lost the school bore well in January 2010 and we are in great trouble in providing water for our school students. At present water is brought from a nearby private well by two women. They carry water on their heads and it does not satisfy our daily requirements. At this context a project is prepared and is submitted for your kind and a favorable consideration.

Our Proposal

            On the facts mentioned above, it has become an immediate and urgent need to dig a bore-well and construct over head tank for our school students. Water source is available at school ground. We have consulted water diviner and an engineer to confirm this and a grant is requested for $6,500.00. It is a one time grant which will make a big difference at school and will help us to solve many problems that we face now.

Our appeal and our Assurance  

            Infant Jesus High School is a Vernacular Medium High School in a hamlet, aiming at the service of the most backward, neglected poor children. Our students hail from very poor families and they manage to come to school because of free education, free test – books and free noon-meal. On behalf of these students I earnestly appeal to you to consider our project proposal favorably. Once the project is sanctioned, we assure you to implement it sincerely and will submit the completion report within three months.

TYPE OF PROJECT: Deep borewell cum Overhead Water Tank and Motor with Pipelines and Taps.

Beneficiaries of the Project:  1100 children of poor, landless agricultural laborer families and rural dalit children in the age group of 11-16 years.

Funds Requested:  $ 7,500

Infant Jesus School is situated in Sembarai Vinayagapuram, a rural interior economically and educationally backward village, 12 kilometers away from Lalgudi, a small taluk town in Trichirapalli District of Tamilnadu. As the prime objective, the school was started with 61 children in June 1989 by Depressed People’s Welfare Association in order to provide secondary school education to the poor children, the children of landless agricultural laborer families and the children of dalit families and orphan children of the surrounding villages.

Infant Jesus School has been very prompt in providing quality education from its inception. The school had gradually developed with good academic results in the past 20 years of its service. Year by year the enrollment of the children has been increasing. There are around 1100 children in the school in the age group of 11 years to 16 years having secondary and higher secondary education from 6 grade to 12 grade. These children are belonging to the landless agricultural landless laborer families, poor and dalilt families from the surroundings of Sembarai Vinayagapuram. Out of 1100 children, 450 stay in the school as boarders and the remaining children are attending to school as day scholars from the near by villages. Owing to the commitment and hard work of the teachers, the school makes 100% results every year and occupies the best school in the educational district till date.

SAFE DRINKING WATER THE ESSENTIAL NEED: Thanks to the financial support from various funding agencies, friends from abroad, DPWA was able to provide basic infrastructures such as class rooms, dormitory building, play ground, science lab, library, dining hall, prayer hall and toilets for the children. Though the school is having such infrastructure, it has been a great challenge for us to provide safe and protected drinking water to the children. At present the students use to drink water brought from the farm well situated near the school which is not sufficient to the children as they use the same water for drinking and washing. And the overhead tank situated 500 meters away from the school is the main water supplier through pipe lines laid under the paddy fields and these pipe lines have got strangled and damaged owing to constant use of power tiller during active agriculture season. There is one hand pump installed in the school campus. The only hand pump could not serve all the children.  Hence here is a proposal for safe and protected drinking water to the children through installation of deep bore well with the construction of water overhead tank with pipelines and motor with electricity connection which could serve all 1100 children inside the school campus.

We most humbly appeal to you to help us with US Dollars 7,500 for the provision of safe and protected drinking water to the needy children at Infant Jesus Higher Secondary School at Sembarai Vinayagapuram through construction of a deep borewell cum overhead water tank and motor with pipelines and taps.

Yours Sincerely

 Fr.S.Dhanapragasam

President, DPWA

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wellsforlife/sets/72157623644570036/

Since I last blogged a lot has happened with Wells for Life, for starters BollywoodH20 took place just last weekend and it was great.  The weather was perfect, thank you God, the food was perfect, except for the fact that there wasn’t any chicken (next year maybe), the dancers were fun to watch and I could go on and on but suffice it to say, it appeared everyone had fun and seeing Indians and non-Indians come together for an afternoon was picture perfect.

As a result of BollywoodH20, were going to be able to fund quite a few water projects in the Trichy area and now more than ever water is needed, the summer season is upon S. India and the heat is increasing and more than ever villagers are going to need access to a reliable and safe water supply and thankfully our projects are going to be able to deliver that peace of mind.

Another exciting event taking place as I type is water being brought at Hope Island.  If you remember I visited this place several months back and their access to water is documented in some photos and video that you can find on our website or on FB.  Previously they were digging shallow wells in the sand and at their request we have implemented 8 new projects which are shallow wells in nature with hand pumps.  What this means now is that the villagers can easily access a safe, protected water supply by simply pumping the hand pump handle.  I am posting a link to these photos which were just sent to me and I hope it produces the same amount of excitement as I experienced when I saw these pictures; water is still life and to be able to give water knowing you are extending life is a joyous thing.

A special thanks goes out to my friend Krissie who has taken up the task of raising funds for Hope Islands water needs and if you want to contribute towards this contact me and I can put you in touch with her.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wellsforlife/sets/72157623644570036/ – link to the photos

Well all good things must come to an end, it’s Spring Break for the kids and Nathan has a cold so I must put down my blogging pen or keystrokes and get back to being a dad.

Why? 

Well, because prior to our arrival and even more important the arrival of Dr. Premdas and the staff of N.A.S.A. there wasn’t much hope.  The small island inhabitants had no school, the children were left to wander the beaches during the day while their dad’s were off fishing the seas and their mothers were on the main land trying to make a living.

All of this is beginning to change.  Aaron is now living on the island and organized the children and has formed a school.  A meal program has been implemented so that the children are guaranteed at least 1 meal a day.  A women empowerment and possibly a micro-enterprise solution will be introduced and last but certainly not least, exploration on their water situation is taking place.

For more on Hope Island watch this video….. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7LJvrvoY_Q

I finally was able to get some rest thanks to the Day Use Room in the Bangkok Airport now for the long journey home via Taipei and Los Angeles yet by the time this is posted I will mostly likely either be in LA already or even home, funny how that works. 

The down side of these trips I realize each and every time but for some reason at the outset I think things will be different but they never are in fact they really do take on the same form and often meaning.  Intentions are really good especially about blogging and being up to date with such things as keeping facebook current, twittering tweets on twitter, I like that, anyway, if you have been to India with me you know the challenges that are faced and doubly so if you are traveling with me, I can be either macro focused that I miss the micro like where did I put my passport, did I leave my luggage in the lobby because it surely isn’t here at the airport with me, to what day is it and what number of projects have we just completed.   You would think this was all rote for me but it isn’t, each trip I hope to be different and yet the same so sorry, you’ll just have to put up with me.

So how was it?  Good.

Ok, can I be done?  Sorry, back to the trip.

How do you really describe what takes place in these places?  In past entries I have described that what takes place on the village level is really that of a celebration and in all truthfulness it is and yet at the same time not every village feels like it.  Not having a team with me other than Bob I can even more aware of the responses of people as we would arrive into their village and carry out a dedication.  The majority of them were thrilled to have us, especially the children.  The look in their eyes, the excitement on their faces, their misbehaving while I am trying to talk and the adults yelling at them to be quiet and some trying to beat them with a stick…it’s really quite comical even the beating part because they rarely hit them and to see them try and miss is like watching a batter try to hit a changeup, rarely do they succeed.

Yet there are some villages where we roll in, jump out, look around and there are only a handful of people, most of them being with our entourage and then slowly thanks to the cell phone more people appear to welcome the foreigners, the people responsible for bringing life to their village through water which leads me to wonder do they really want us and our project?  Good questions to ask and yet I don’t think I will really know the answer because the reality is what they tell me is what they know I want to hear.  I am not questioning our work in the slightest by this; I’m just being brutally honest with my thoughts when I am there in the moment.  Truth be told they need the water, are they grateful, probably, could they survive without it, probably, they would just have to walk a little farther and maybe it wouldn’t be as clean but they will make do. 

So why then?

I guess the answer is because these responses aren’t the norm they are the exception and I don’t want them to spoil the gift for others and so I continue to give regardless of the reception.  Does this bother me?  No, not really, it just makes me go hmmm and within that I try to pray a simple prayer and ask the Lord to use the project in some form to reveal His love to them as individuals.

Notwithstanding the above, most places as I have explained are totally excited to have us and you can really feel the love concerning our work and in those times I get filled up, most likely these are the blessings from Heaven which keeps me going project after project.

What do I make then of this trip in particular?

Ahhh, a nice relaxing one, almost at least.  It was true that we carried out 15 project dedications between Trichy and Tuni, affecting thousands of lives with water and more over we were able to also dedicate a church building and a generator that Wells for Life provided to the kids at New Life Children’s Home.  We also journeyed out into the Bay of Bengal on a chartered boat and did it covertly by mistake, supposed to go through the port and offer up our passports but chose not too for some reason, luckily a phone call to the Port Authority while at sea yielded no misfortune or undue attention from the Navy.

Anyway, we went by a really slow boat out to a long strip of land they call and island, Hope Island to be exact and the significance here is that these people are really tribal.  Tribal in the sense that there couldn’t have been more than 100 of them and they are fishermen by trade and as fisherman they go fish for stretches of time leaving their families to fend for themselves.  While the men are out at sea or on the mainland selling their fish the women often find opportunity to make some money through various enterprises on the mainland leaving the older folk and children to fend for themselves.  Long story short here, a school was started very recently and taking up by Dr. Premdas and his staff at NASA with cooperative funding from a Canadian NGO and the Indian government.  Reason I was there was to address their water situation and so we did.

Oh, the result, well, I looked at the sand, then the sea, and assessed they needed water, clean, unsalted water.  Pretty easy huh.  Anyone could have ascertained that, so I guess I was there to lend my professional opinion, trying to be funny here but if you’re not laughing then sorry I guess you don’t like my humor, anyway, I think we can do something but it is going to be a little different. 

What’s the solution?

Well according to my hydro-geologist/engineer with whom I consulted when we got to Hyderabad we either spend a lot of cash for a desalination system or we drill a shallow well with a small hand pump, 10 feet up to a maximum of 20 feet and outfit it such that it draws out the sweet water which actually exists below the sand and above the salt water which is a tad deeper below the surface of this small island.  This solution will last 9 to 12 months then will go dry but the glory of it is you can then dismantle the project and go drill a new well and reuse your components.  Your drilling costs are minimal because you would drill this by hand using an auger which you could purchase up front and give to the community and thus enable them to become self sufficient in securing their future water needs. 

If you are wondering what they do now, they dig small shallow pits in the sand and after removing about 5 feet of sand you begin to get water seeping up out of the sand.  You then bail out this water into a water bucket and then let it sit for about a day for everything to settle then start drinking what’s on top; it’s sweet water and has no salt.  Amazing stuff and I actually saw this in widespread practice in Sri Lanka after the tsunami so I know it works and in fact they demonstrated it for us.

So from a water perspective there is hope for Hope Island.  With water, a school for the children, slowly hope is being built and after listening to the leaders talk, they are looking forward to doing whatever they can to build a better future for their kids and having a school is the beginning of this process. 

Hope Island, like so many places we encounter is filled with individuals who need to know that they matter and that their life has meaning and purpose.  One of the things that I enjoyed most about my visit to Hope Island was the opportunity that was afforded to me to talk about Hope and how to get it. 

While sharing with these people it became evident how hopeless people really are.  On the outside it may appear hope exists but when you talk to them and listen to their dreams you begin to realize it is about life here on earth and it begins to take on a strangely familiar hollow sound to it.  How do you tell someone that there is more to life and living that just here on earth but that living really doesn’t start until you live life with a view for the future, for eternity, for Heaven?  Heaven becomes the goal but that really isn’t the goal, that’s the place we refer to, the goal is relationship for eternity with the Creator of the Universe, that my friends is the goal. 

Any part of our life that we live without a view for the future is really selfish living.  Having a view for the future is what should be dictating what all of our actions should be here on earth and in fact is what Jesus had in mind when he was telling his disciples to work for the food that lasts forever.  Why is it we spend so much of our energies working for the food that perishes?  Great question and one that has been asked for centuries and was relevant enough for Jesus to address it thousands of years ago.

This isn’t the place to jump really deep into this but let me just give a quick answer which I hold onto, for me, it’s not a either or proposition but a both and.  You have to work in order to eat; you do the earthly so that you can afford to be active in the spiritual. 

It’s about motivation and heart.  Look inside, what motivates you?  If it’s work for the sake of making money then guess what?  You’re working for the wrong master.  If it’s work to provide for yourself or your family or loved ones and you aren’t neglecting the gifts, talents and abilities God has given you, you view your life as an emissary for the King, well, and you’re working for the food which doesn’t perish.

It’s really quite simple and here is the question to ask to show you your heart in living – Do you do what you do wholeheartedly because you are doing it as an act of service to God or are you doing it because  and you fill in the rest.  Anything less, is well, it’s less than what God wants.

Life, one that is filled with Hope and an expectation for the future has one thing in view; God with His arms outstretched to you, beckoning you to come to Him and be with Him.  That my friends is Hope that will last an eternity and when that is your view, you can undertake anything here on earth because you know that in everything you engage in your are doing it in service of Him, the King, the Creator, our Father, our Friend, our Lover.

(Pictures will come soon.)