Thank you for supporting World Vision this year. We wish you a blessed Christmas! We have great news to share this Christmas season.
Finished!
To our U.S. donors: Please do not send any money to World Vision for our plan to reach everyone, everywhere we work with basic clean water access in Rwanda. Unless, of course, you’re one of the many people who have made multi-year commitments to our progress there. It is not often that a non-profit asks you not to send money, but we’re all about working ourselves out of a job, particularly with regard to reaching everyone, everywhere we work with clean water, about 50 million people between 2016-2030.
Here’s how this happened. On World Water Day in March 2018, we announced a God-inspired vision to reach everyone, everywhere we work with clean water in an entire country. We were determined to provide a tangible example that we could finish the job. We picked Rwanda and set a goal of 5 years to reach about 1 million people with clean water. This required $30 million in new donations from U.S. donors – a huge goal. Up until that point, we almost never received designated gifts for our Rwanda water program but we felt it critical that we continue to also fund our work in other countries.
Praise God that our donors responded to this bold vision. As many donors have told us, it’s exciting to know that there can be an end to the need for funding. Much sooner than expected, we’ve received the donations and multi-year commitments from U.S. donors needed to fund the plans for water systems in Rwanda. Many of the gifts to Rwanda have been truly sacrificial including providing the profits from the sales of homes and businesses.
Our Rwanda team has been amazed at the generosity of our donors and have responded by increasing their impact. Prior to this commitment, Rwanda reached about 70,000 people a year with clean water. That impact increased this year to 234,000 people reached with clean water, and while there’s still much to do, we are on track to reach everyone, everywhere we work within 5 years. This is amazing progress, particularly considering that our work was put on pause during the first phase of the pandemic. We also provided handwashing facilities in 50 health centers, in schools reaching more than 70,000 children, and for nearly 50,000 households. We trained more than 500 faith leaders on critical behaviors to share with their congregations in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The bottom line is that the donations by our donors are having tremendous impact, more than we could have imagined.
Here's a message from Edgar Sandoval, Sr., President and CEO of World Vision U.S. thanking everyone who has contributed to this amazing accomplishment.
Based on this success, we are starting to build new finish the job plans for Zambia, Ghana, and Honduras and hope to have them available for World Water Day 2021. Please contact your donor representative if you’d like to be part of the foundational group who will invest in these plans being built. Thank you for being part of our work to provide clean water to the most vulnerable in the name of Jesus.
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