The COVID-19 crisis has seriously impacted Africa, 25 million of whom lack access to water and basic hand-washing facilities. Without water, which we take for granted, the poor cannot take the necessary measures to curb the spread of the virus.
We are urgently scaling up our work to install 10 water wells costing £30,000 across the island of Pemba, where people need them most, to provide access to water for drinking, and sanitation to help the poor protect themselves against diseases. These wells will serve over 5,000 people.
The Al-Ansari Foundation has been drilling for water to get access to clean, and safe water to large communities for over a decade. Our wells are built across Zanzibar and its neighbouring islands. The population of Zanzibar is projected to be 1.7 million inhabitants and an expected growth to nearly 1.9 million by 2025.
We believe in gifting water for life and ensuring that our wells are a sustainable source of water across all of Zanzibar for years to come. We need to build many more wells, to reach the most needy who have no reliable source of water, and risk contracting deadly waterborne diseases from contaminated water sources.
The humanitarian rationale for donating water needs no introduction. There are numerous ahadith (sayings of the Prophet Mohammed peace be upon him) on the virtues of giving people water. Amongst them, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said:
The best charity is giving water drink [Ahmad] and he was the most generous in giving charity.
Your donations will save lives, by regenerating entire communities and making sure everyone gets access to safe water to drink, and also benefiting farming and livestock.
Pemba island has no water infrastructure for majority of the region. The island is stifled with poverty and destitution. The terrain is very difficult to extract fresh drinking water and this is why we have focussed our efforts to help the communities get access to water.
The cost of a deep borehole water well (digging up to 120m) is £3,000, which includes an electric motorised pump to extract the water to a 5,000 litre tank, which is tapped off for easy access to water. We provide a water supply free from pollutants and our wells are built to last.
Our current water wells serve over 70,000 people a day. These deep borehole wells are a lifeline to the Zanzibarian people.
We have a dedicated water team with drilling machines, trucks, and specialist equipment. We ensure that our donors are kept well-informed of the process from start to finish through an allocated member of our team in the UK. They will provide you with all you need to know about your well, from the location to reasons why the area was chosen, through to the overall reach and impact your well will have on the local community.
It is a monumental and everlasting gift for the poor, and for some, who until that point, walked for miles for water, it will be truly life-changing.
Providing water wells is a continuous form of sadakah for as long as the well supplies water even after ones death.
It is narrated that the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, there are seven deeds for which deeds are written for a person even after he dies in his grave, among them is digging a well. [Saheeh Al-Targheeeb]
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