Our Partners

Ryan’s Well works in partnership with local non-governmental and community based organizations to implement water, sanitation and hygiene education projects.

These organizations are comprised of dedicated individuals with technical expertise, community leadership skills and the most invaluable characteristic – insight to local conditions and culture. For water and sanitation projects to be sustainable, they must be driven by the communities they are aiming to support in order to encourage ownership and proper ongoing management. With field crews, drillers, community health nurses and training facilitators, our local partners carry out incredible work in harsh conditions with many challenges to face – rainy seasons, impassable roads, transporting materials on foot and managing more community requests for water and sanitation than the limited funding can possibly provide. Perseverance is the one word that sums up our partners.

Each and every organization we work with is researched and reviewed at several levels to ensure the accountability of their operations and technical expertise to deliver sustainable water and sanitation access. While these organizations look to us for guidance, financial support and monitoring, our project team based in Canada learns so much from our partners. By working together, we learn about what interventions, such as rainwater harvesting, drilled wells, protected springs, pit latrines, and methods for community training will work best for the communities in their region.

Our goal is to continue to work with our long term, established partner organizations to deepen their capacity to deliver sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene education projects that empower communities to grow and prosper. Over time, projects can then be increased in scale to provide water and sanitation access to an even greater number of people in specific focus areas.

With a little help from Ryan’s Well and people like you, the local skills and insight of our partners are poised for success.

Together we can make it happen for people across the globe impacted by the global water and sanitation crisis.

We used to walk long distances to fetch water. Before we met Ryan’s Well we used to get dirty water and boil it. Dirty water from ponds. And we would suffer, boiling water with firewood which we used as fuel in our villages. But when we came to know of Ryan’s Well, immediately our lives changed. We’ve been in partnership with Ryan’s Well since 2002, and I cannot tell of the wonders, life has changed greatly. Especially for women and children. It is the women and children who will walk long distances, and the women again who fetch fire wood from bushes. And I must say, on behalf of the whole organization, and western Uganda at large, bravo Ryan’s Well Foundation! Thank you!”
Hellen, Chairperson for RWIDF Uganda

OUR PARTNERS

DIVINEAID

(Divine Agency for Integrated Development)
in Uganda

Country: Uganda (Northern)

Ryan’s Well Partner Since: 2003

DivineAID (previously referred to as Divine Waters Uganda) has been a Ryan’s Well partner since 2003, but before that, their Executive Director, Deleo, was actually a part of the original CPAR team that drilled Ryan’s very first well in 1998! DivineAID is a charitable service organization that builds water projects, provides pump repair training, sanitation and hygiene education, and educational support, and that empowers rural communities of Northern Uganda. The DivineAID team is very experienced in all components involved in organizing and training a self-sustainable community. From the beginning of every project, Ugandan communities are involved in all aspects of planning, site selection, drilling, and implementation, in order to facilitate ownership of the water project. DivineAID also works closely with local government district water officers and sub-county officials in both site identification and WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) training to ensure that the most vulnerable communities in Northern Uganda have access to safe water.

RWIDF

(Rukungiri Women Integrated Development Foundation)
in Western Uganda

Country: Uganda (Western)

Ryan’s Well Partner Since: 2003

Founded in 2002, Rukungiri Women Integrated Development Foundation (RWIDF) is a non-governmental women’s organization based in the Rukungiri district of Uganda, with a mandate to enhance the skills, livelihoods, and well-being of women and youth, in order to mobilize communities, and increase their awareness of water, sanitation, and hygienic standards, micro-financing, reproductive health, food security, good governance, and human rights advocacy. RWIDF’s mission is to eradicate poverty and raise the living standards of the rural population living in Western Uganda. The initiative was started by Hellen Kabajungu in the 1980s, as a way to empower local women in the Rukungiri district after an increase in the number of widows due to the AIDS crisis. RWIDF is very much a family business; Hellen and her husband, Steven, are both still involved with the foundation, but their sons, Anthony and Timothy, have assumed responsibility for all project-related activities!

DONA

(Dawn of a New Age)
in Ghana

Country: Ghana

Ryan’s Well Partner Since: 2006

DONA is a non-governmental organization based in Kumasi, Ghana. The group started in 2000, and facilitated environmental awareness programs regarding environmental issues in communities in the Ashanti Region – for example, regarding illegal mining activities, which left a majority of the surface water in the area polluted with mercury. DONA also offers capacity-building programmes for NGOs and community-based cooperatives on business management and on the development of biodiversity conservation. They have proven their ability to execute water and WASH projects, and have established their capacity to take on more project work each year.