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)
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)
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)
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.
PUENTE-COLLECT (Puente Desarrollo Internacional
Country: Dominican Republic
Ryan’s Well Partner Since: 2021
Puente Desarrollo Internacional was founded in the Dominican Republic in 2018 by Scott and Hope, when the two Peace Corps Volunteers set out to solve problems they were encountering first-hand. Co-founders Scott and Hope lived in rural communities, where a lack of data meant that they struggled to articulate what the biggest issues were for community members; they witnessed a disconnect between their host communities and the foreign organizations that visited for short stints in an attempt to help. Puente was created to pave a better future for development. Their mission is to connect international development organizations and local institutions with under-served communities more efficiently to make development work more collaborative, impactful and sustainable. Puente built a robust, mobile-first platform for managing community assessments, monitoring and evaluation, mapping, and prioritizing community needs. Additionally, they construct their own water and sanitation projects for rural communities in the Dominican Republic. Ryan’s Well Foundation partnered with the Puente team in 2021, and our local partners are actively collecting data via the Puente-Collect app.
