Starting with rainwater
We began with gutters, pipes, and storage tanks. Volunteers helped bring the materials to island communities and put the systems together. Catching rain brought water closer to home, but it also taught us how much the seasons mattered.
Cost and the dry season
The systems were expensive to buy, transport, and build. They worked during about nine rainy months of the year. During the three dry months, the rain stopped and stored water could run short. Families needed a source they could turn to when the tanks were no longer enough.
Questions that led to wells
At Rotary presentations, someone almost always asked, “What about a well?” At first, we pictured a huge drilling rig that could never reach these roadless islands. More questions led to more research, and we found Hydromissions. Its portable hand auger made a well possible. In 2011, their team helped us drill our first one.
How that experience shapes the program today
We still carry those lessons into every well: listen to the families, work with the materials we can get, and keep improving what does not work well enough. Rainwater catchment was where we began. It set us on the path to the wells and repairable hand pumps we build today.
