These include deep bore wells, guttering, water tanks, hand washing facilities, toilets and health education programmes.

BeyondWater is registered as a trust both in New Zealand and Kenya, and as a charity in Australia.

How they Got Started

In November 2007 Pete and Sharon Crean were living in Sydney, Australia. They were presented with the fact that one billion people don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water and another two billion don’t have the use of a toilet. They gathered a team of volunteers who were enthusiastic in doing something to alleviate poverty in East Africa such as Kenya and Uganda and started BeyondWater.. Both Sharon and Pete spend a fair bit of time in these areas.

10 years on, they have been able to give over 100,000 people across East Africa sustainable solutions and a way out of poverty. They gave us an insight on some of the many projects that they do for East Africa such as the building of school latrines, where through their Hygiene program they teach simple tasks such as the washing of hands using soap and clean water after Latrine use. Another one of their projects is the provision of wells to deliver a sustainable water well in which they work with local businesses to build the wells. One of their newer projects is the Girl project. In this project they have identified that many girls in these villages don't have access to things that we take for granted daily, like underwear, sanitary pads, bras, soap, toothpaste and even a toothpaste. 

The Girl Project by the provision of these basic essentials is to keep girls in school. More than that though, they give them leadership development, career counselling and mentoring skills. This is done by local women leaders who inspire the girls to achieve their scholastic and employment goals at monthly meetings. It costs $80 per girl, per year to have a student in The Girl Project. Through BeyondWater you can partner with them by sponsoring a student into one of their programs across Kenya and Uganda.

Another key project is the support of New Frontiers Health Force Ngoswani, Kenya in which Dr Tonia Hawthorne setup the Ngoswani Community Health Center which is a 24 hour clinic in Ngoswani, Kenya. The clinic is staffed with Kenyan trained medical professionals supervised by its medical director, Dr. Tonya Hawthorne. Ngoswani is a rural town in South Western Kenya, which has a catchment area of 30,000 people (mainly Masai). Often women will walk over several kilometres to give birth at the center, however they will delay if they go into labour at night. Most women have had Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) performed on them, which complicates the birth process.

The nearest large hospital is an hours drive on an unsealed road. Its focus is on pre-natal and maternal health care, accident and emergency and basic medical care. The clinic is planning on expanding to a long term stay facility, but requires water to do so. This is an area that continually suffers from severe drought and because of this there is a high mortality rate of babies.

Do visit and read more about these amazing project on their website here.