NorWell for South Sudan
We are a group of 19 students and one teacher who have made it our mission to raise money for the construction of a well in a South Sudanese Village.
As seniors, we all chose to take an English course called Semantics where we read Linda Sue Park’s A Long Walk to Water. The book details the hardships and strife caused by the scarcity of clean, accessible drinking water. A Long Walk to Water tells the story of Salva Dut, a young man whose life was affected by these hardships when his father became life-threateningly ill due to the consumption of unhealthy drinking water. As a result, Salva founded Water for South Sudan, which raises money to drill wells for villages in his homeland. We were all touched by Salva's story and believe that access to clean drinking water is a basic human right, so we would like to work with Salva Dut, sending the organization Water for South Sudan $15,000 to aid his efforts in digging wells in South Sudanese villages.
South Sudan, wracked by war for the past thirty years, is the most impoverished country in the world and currently is suffering from a water crisis. More than 30% of the people in South Sudan must walk for as long as 8 hours a day to collect water miles from their homes from ponds, ditches, and hand-dug wells. This water, however, often contains disease-causing and even life-threatening bacteria and parasites.
Clean drinking water is not only a human necessity, but a driving economic force--when villagers spend up to 8 hours every day searching for water, the whole village struggles to establish education and infrastructure. A well will enable an impoverished village to grow schools, markets, and other vital infrastructure.
In order to accomplish our goal of $15,000, we are running a series of events and fundraisers. We invite you to partner with us as we, the residents of Norwell, help villagers gain water which will allow the girls to attend school instead of fetch water, and the village to thrive. This initiative would yield concrete results: a well that would change the lives of innumerable villagers in South Sudan.
