Safe Water Saves Lives

How do families in rural Ethiopia get water? Women and children spend several hours each day hauling water for drinking and cooking back to their families over dusty, often rugged, tracks. Sometimes a donkey carries the load, but in many cases there are no donkeys. The women strap a full water jug to their backs and carry it for miles across a semi-arid landscape under a hot sun.

Dhara Botara, a mother of eight in the remote community of Gura in Ethiopia’s Oromiya region, used to spend more than three hours each day walking to fetch water, occasionally accompanied by some of her children. The surface water she collected was often dirty and sometimes contaminated with parasites, which sickened her children.

Today, Dhara gets clean water twice a day from a new pump located just minutes from her home. In the morning and again in the afternoon, she visits the pump to haul back one or two five-gallon water containers. The water, from an aquifer 200 feet deep, comes out pure and cool. In addition, she and her family now have access to a private bathing shed and a concrete washstand where they can wash their clothes and dishes.The water project is one of three developed by the Oromo Self-Reliance Association with support from Oxfam America. Oxfam’s $42,000 contribution also underwrote the cost of the wells, pumps, bathing sheds, and laundry stations in two other communities besides Gura — Qamaxo and Alanqa — located some 50 miles southwest of Addis Ababa. Altogether, more than 1,800 people are benefiting from the water projects.

“Clean water is just part of the equation,” says Abera Tola, Oxfam America’s regional director for the Horn of Africa. “Women now have more time to spend with their families, children can spend more time in school—the whole community benefits from these projects.”

From Auctions to Awareness

While cleaning his San Francisco apartment last December, Eli Collins found a half-dozen technology items — a wireless router, headphones, and an amplifier, among other things — that he knew he could sell on eBay. But instead of keeping the cash, Eli decided to donate the funds from his auctions to Oxfam America through eBay Giving Works.

Eli first gave to Oxfam America right after the 2004 Asian tsunami, and he’s been a regular donor ever since. “Oxfam is pretty much the only charity I give to nowadays,” he says. “What they care about, and how they operate, fits with my own views. They have an international focus, and they keep costs low, so they are able to channel more aid to the actual problems. They understand what’s going on in the world.”

Eli’s auctions were successful, raising about $400 for Oxfam. “I’m fairly active on eBay, and I sell things frequently,” he says. “I find that when you’re selling for charity, items go faster and get a lot more bids. People are easier to work with, too.”

The auctions also gave Eli a chance to increase awareness of Oxfam America’s work. “Not only did the dollars go to the people who need them,” he says, “but also I could bring public attention to a specific problem, like the crisis in Sudan.”

Along the same lines, Eli says, it makes sense for Oxfam and eBay to partner on the Community Gives fundraising initiative. “It’s great to bring something like Oxfam to eBay Community members, because it publicizes the organization more widely, and it brings donations to a good cause.  It really takes advantage of the fact that eBay is such a huge community.”

Eli Collins
(eBay user ID: elicollins)