Wells for Women Farmers

All online donations to this appeal from 12 noon tomorrow (Tues 3 Dec) will be doubled, thanks to match funding in the Big Give Christmas Challenge, for one week only!

Growing wealth (and health) with water

Impoverished Ethiopian women who created a farming collective to grow vegetables have inspired our 2024 Christmas Appeal.

The women included members of a self-help group funded by Global Care, which encouraged them to start small businesses. Initially they sold vegetables purchased from a wholesaler.

They soon realised they’d make more profit if they grew their own crops, so they pooled their profits to rent a piece of land. Then they made a decision which really sent their business soaring, clubbing together to dig a well and install a pump, to irrigate the land.

Not only was a single harvest more bountiful, but they could multiply the number of harvests they got from their land, hugely increasing their income. They haven’t looked back!

This Christmas we want to build on this group’s experience, by delivering five more wells, serving a further 50 impoverished women farmers and their families – around 250 people. The group have shown that with a reliable source of irrigation, farming families can double and even triple the number of harvests they can glean from their land. This hugely increases their income potential, as well as ensuring a generous supply of fresh food for their families.

This is transformational in the lives of families who previously lived hand-to-mouth, season to season, dependent upon increasingly erratic rainfall to grow crops essential to their survival. With access to a stable water source, everything changes.

Our partners say underground water sources are in plentiful supply in this region of Ethiopia. It’s just that very few families can afford to take advantage of them.
Families in poverty just don’t have the funds needed to dig a well which reaches deep enough, or purchase and run a pump.

“They toil in vain,” say our partners, “because they are not in a position to use the resource with which they are endowed.”

Doubling your donations this Christmas

We hope to raise £40,000 to deliver five new wells, for five collectives of ten women farmers.

Thanks to generous donors and a Big Give Champion, we have £20,000 in match funding available to help us reach our five-well target.

Every penny given online during the week of the Big Give Christmas Challenge (from midday on Tuesday 3rd December to midday on Tuesday 10th December), will be doubled until we reach our £40,000 target.

Save the dates and please give generously to bless impoverished Ethiopian communities with tools to help build a sustainable future free from poverty.

Regular meals, consistent education and better health for children

Head of Operations Steve Wicking met these inspiring women in Koshe earlier this year:

“This has been a really exciting project. We’ve seen incredible success where women have had the opportunity to work together to build a better future for themselves and their families. This group are collaborating to grow crops including tomatoes, onions, bananas, wheat, maize and cabbage, which they sell in local markets. Access to ground water has tripled the annual yield and freed them from the risk of exploitation by middlemen at the wholesale market.
“In light of this success, our partners were keen to extend this opportunity to women in other local communities. By providing them with the infrastructure and training needed to successfully grow and sell produce together, they are giving the women the tools they need to achieve financial security – and financial security means regular meals, consistent education and better health for their children.”

Save the date

Don’t forget to put Tuesday 3rd December in your diary! Gifts on the Big Give website will be doubled from 12 noon on 3rd December to 12 noon on 10th December, until we reach our target of £40,000.

Gifts given through our website cannot be doubled.