Access to Safe Water for the Poorest of the Poor

Hello, My name is Sam Forrester. I'm 16 years old and a sophomore in high school working on a year-long humanitarian aid project that will culminate in a mission to Lira, Uganda in May of this year. It's hard to believe, but there are still whole communities of people who do not have access to clean, safe drinking water, which has had devastating impacts caused by totally preventable diseases.  In Uganda, people living in rural villages are often required to travel long distances to collect water for use at school and home. This burden of collecting water usually falls on women and children, especially girls, who typically spend 1-2 hours per day collecting contaminated water.  I want to bring clean water to two communities with the support of a local organization that partners with people like me to dig wells for those who desperately need it, along with the education on sanitation and personal hygiene to quite simply save lives. Will you help me? To accomplish my goal, I need to raise $20,000 to pay for the costs of two complete well systems. There is a lot of work that needs to take place before I get there, including working through a community agreement and performing a survey, along with the purchase of the hand pumps and the concrete, among other things, that we will need to accomplish this goal. I am partnering with Ryan's Well Foundation who specializes in this exact kind of effort to provide WASH training (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) and will be planting fruit trees in the community. We will also be teaching those in the community how to perform basic pump maintenance to ensure ongoing access to safe water long after I leave. I've set up this GoFundMe page to make it easier for you to partner with me as I seek to provide the foundations of long-term solutions in which the residents of two rural villages can focus on living instead of struggling to survive.