Wells of Life, Inc. has currently drilled or repaired over 910+ borehole water wells in rural Uganda villages, churches, schools, orphanages and medical clinics at a current cost of $8,000 each and repaired over 440+ wells drilled by other entities (now broken and abandoned) at a cost of $4,000 each.  Both programs attack the world-wide crisis in the shortage of clean drinking water by starting in rural Uganda in the spirit of Matthew 17:20: "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains". 

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We are a group of individuals, families and businesses that are committed to forming in America (and now extended into the Republic of Ireland) an organization to put deeds to the dictates of 1 John 3:18 ("let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions") in a specific application that is critically needed, quickly accomplished, immediately verifiable and effective, and easily replicated to scale. A child dies in East Africa from the ill effects of contaminated water every 22 seconds – one child in five dies before reaching his or her fifth birthday of causes directly attributable to the ingestion of contaminated water, the only drink available – even though God's clean, lifesaving, sight-preserving water is only a few dozen yards directly under their feet. 

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We in America are the most blessed people on earth, in the entire history of the world, but our culture of instant personal gratification and excessive consumption does not encourage the sharing of that worldly wealth with the less fortunate, especially on the other side of the world. Luke 12:14 warns us that from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded, and we are all familiar with the adage of Matthew 25:40 that has no geographical limitations: "whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me". Our organization is based on the concept that no act of charity is too small to be measured and appreciated, and 1 Peter 4:10: “God has given each of you a gift from His great Variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.” 

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Our wells, each serving approximately 1,000 of our poorest brothers and sisters in Christ by providing decades of clean water, can be started with the mustard seed of a child's contribution of a single dollar contributed to the funding of a specific well. Every dollar donated to a well goes 100% and ONLY to the drilling and maintenance of a well. (All of our overhead is raised by our Legacy Circle donors and other special programs). While hopefully that seed money will quickly soon reach the necessary well cost of $8,000, in the meantime that child, that family, their friends, neighbors, relations and businesses, have been provided with an easily obtained, specific goal of funding a specific well in a very needy place. The experience of working together towards the goal of realizing that we are all God's workmanship, created to do good works (Ephesians 2:10) allows each of us in our respective spheres of influence to grow into a fruitful relationship with each other, here in America as well as in Uganda, and as "well" as with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

 

There are an estimated 50,000 non-functioning water wells across sub-Saharan Africa that were drilled by well-meaning organizations that did not instruct the benefitted community sufficiently on the necessity of collecting funds from the water users to do preventive maintenance and plan ahead to pay for the repairs that are needed for any machinery, and how to recognize the small signs of developing mechanical problems which left unattended will eventually (and usually within only a few short years) cause the well to cease functioning. In 2019 we launched “Operation Restoration” to begin the repair of such non-functioning and abandoned wells drilled by others. We have been able to accumulate sufficient data to effectively price such restoration at a cost of $4,000 per well and now are approaching having successfully done so for over 400 communities. In 2024, we launched Greenwell Maintenance and became the area service provider in the districts where we are drilling.  This is additional insurance for the longevity of the well. The lack of access to clean water is a tragedy, and even more so is having experienced those benefits and then having them taken away. However, that’s the reality for hundreds of thousands of rural communities. 

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Wells of Life has the ability to educate the benefitted communities in more ways than just providing clean water access and teaching rudimentary sanitation and hygiene concepts, through our “Healthy Village Program”. We have experimented with greatly expanding our usual pre-drilling village preparation and maintenance education programs and expanding our sanitation and hygiene programs over a full year of intensive teaching and supervision. In 2019, we ran a one-year pilot project in a large network of communities (20 villages and a school; 2,257 households and 12,414 people) with a much more comprehensive community pre-drilling preparation and sanitation and hygiene program, after first conducting a comprehensive baseline study so we could quantify the results with measurable data. The Impact Report (available on our website, www.wellsoflife.org) verifies the results of that pilot program and our Annual Reports and monthly copies of our newsletter “The Well” (all also available on our website) updates our continuing success and confirms that clean water access is indeed the critical first step to health, but an extensive sanitation and hygiene education is a force multiplier of all benefits. As of the date of this Statement (February 2022), we have repeated this very detailed, comprehensive program in twelve other individual community groupings, with several more currently scheduled. The cost of a comprehensive “Healthy Village Program” is an additional $8,000 and complements either a new well or a restored well. We are committed to striving to extend this comprehensive program as widely as funding permits, as we have verified that such intensive indoctrination and training is the key to sustainability and maximizing the utilization and benefit of clean water access. 

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We utilize the showing of the feature-length “Jesus Film”, with the dialogue in the local dialect of each specific village, as a part of our educational efforts regardless of the scope of any drilling or repair efforts, because although we are a non-denominational non-profit, we are a Christian one, and we want to explain WHY we do what we are doing: “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us love not with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:17-18). 

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How many wells are needed in Uganda, a country the size of the State of Oregon and home to 47 million people, 80 % of whom are our fellow Christians? Perhaps 100,000 new or repaired wells, properly maintained by properly educated communities. It’s difficult to say as the population grows. We can definitely say many more are needed immediately. And when we see our fellow brothers and sisters suffering and dying from a lack of clean water, which is often only a few hundred feet away at most (but inaccessible as it’s straight down), we simply cannot ignore the words of 1 John 3:17: “But whoever has the goods of the world and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” 

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Are we at Wells of Life actually solving the world water crisis, or at least the water crisis in rural Uganda? No. But we ARE taking small but very meaningful, powerful steps to do so. We might not be changing the world every day, but we are changing the world every day for the approximately one thousand people in our last village, and tomorrow we will change the world for another thousand people in the next village, regardless of their religious knowledge or convictions. We will manifest our beliefs and preach the Good News through our actions as well as through our deeds. We have in our eleven years of existence changed the world for over 1 million people. It’s more than just a drop in the bucket, but it’s a very large bucket that we are slowly starting to fill, and we are showing other organizations a fast, simple, cost-effective method of making a profound change for the better - one community, one school, one orphanage, one rural health clinic, ONE CLEAN WATER WELL at a time. To quote Dorothy Day, “People say, ‘what can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we can only lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform those actions and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.” 

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We appreciate that “the poor will always be with us” and we know that we are not going to solve the world water crisis by ourselves nor in our lifetime.  But we at Wells of Life approach the issue on a very practical, specific basis - we are committed to bringing clean water access in Jesus’ name to one community of approximately 1,000 people at a time by drilling or repairing a long-lasting, simple but effective bore-hole, hand-pump water well, and teaching sanitation and hygiene practices that will best use that clean water, and we will then move on to the next village and repeat the process. We are inspired by the action plan so well-expressed by Mother Theresa: “If you can’t save all of the babies, save at least one” and “I used to believe that prayer changes things but now I know that prayer changes us, and we change things.” As Teresa of Avila explained: “Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.” 

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The expectations of our faith are clear; our instructions are simple, and our rewards are promised: “For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward.” - Mark 9:41 ; “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” - Matthew 5:7 ; “Give and it shall be given unto you…by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return” - Luke 6:8 ; “Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered – how fleeting my life is.” Psalms 39:4. 

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Please help us accomplish these goals. Together, starting today, we can help make His Kingdom come, and His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.