Like many internet launches, the arrival of Dog Canyon carries the hope of spreading a little light on a dark world. But hope is a tricky concept, appearing in four-year election cycles with chances of actual hope akin to shooting craps in Vegas – long odds in alternating, even-number years to keep hope alive, and craps for every other roll.
Rather than wait for the 2010 or 2012 elections, I’d like to use my space here on a hope that’s not about what we do collectively in a ballot booth, but about what we do individually in our lives. Who knows, at the end of this column, you may be motivated to take action that could turn hope into reality. If not, maybe my next piece will be the one that gets your heart and your mind racing in unison.
Each of these pieces stem from a twenty-country, five-continent journey shooting my new documentary, One Peace at a Time. The film focuses on the possibility of providing basic rights – water, nutrition, education, healthcare and more – to every child. The movie is just moving into release, but I’d like to jump the gun with some practical solutions that I’ve seen working in all corners of the globe.
My family and I live in Central Texas, currently in the grips of a long drought, but the water shortages here are moderate compared to the 1.2 billion people on earth who have no access to clean drinking water. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to water challenges, but some of the very best water work is being done in Ethiopia by the Austin nonprofit, A Glimmer of Hope.
I spent several weeks in Ethiopia last year, much of my time with Glimmer’s founders, Philip and Donna Berber, and all of it in daily exchanges with rural people whose lives have seen dramatic improvement through Glimmer’s integrated development approach covering water, education, healthcare and opportunity.
A staggering 70% of Ethiopia’s 78 million people do not have access to clean water. Glimmer’s response has been to build three thousand water projects, two thousand of them hand-dug wells. When I say “hand-dug”, I mean men from the local communities dig a smooth shaft 50- to 60-feet-deep, descending into the dark hole on welded rebar ladders to dig while men and women pull the rocks and dirt to the surface one bucket at a time. Ethiopian universities have trained thousands of hydrologists, and the local development agencies employ them to choose the best well locations, to dynamite when a layer of granite proves too much for the rock bars, and to guide giant public works projects that have built thousands of miles of hill-side terraces that increase recharge of aquifers.
The local community provides the labor, and Glimmer covers the hard costs, including concrete, hand pump and chlorination.
“A well like this,” Philip Berber told me at a triumphant celebration for a new well, “costs $3,500 and serves around 500 people. What’s that – around $7 per head?”
Photo by Katie Pipkin
The results of an accessible source of clean water start with a reduction of water-borne diseases and infant mortality. Women and girls are also freed from the incredible burden of walking up to 6 hours daily for household water. That liberated time enables girls to attend school for the first time, and women to earn an income that gives them a voice in their home and their community. With a voice in their home, women choose smaller, stronger families with less mouthes to feed.
In short, we’re talking about the basis for lasting development – for seven dollars a head.
Much has been written the past decade about the failure of large-scale aid to Africa. The reasons include corruption, inefficiency, poor planning and no sense of local ownership.
A Glimmer of Hope avoids those pitfalls in a number of important ways. The full cost of operating AGOH – both their offices in the U.S. and the all-important Ethiopia team – are 100% underwritten by a substantial permanent endowment contributed at founding by the Berbers. When a donor pitches in a dollar, every penny goes directly to its designated project.
Corruption is avoided by partnering directly with proven regional development agencies like the REST (Relief Society of Tigray) and TDA (Tigray Development Agency) which have helped turn northern Ethiopia into the most thriving area of a country. If partner doesn’t deliver as promised, Glimmer can cut off funding and work with someone else
If digging a well by hand doesn’t give you a sense of local ownership, then the local well-maintenance committee is sure to do the trick. Meeting one team that included two women charged with keeping a heavy hand-pump functional through endless hours of operation, I asked the women if they’d feel comfortable doing repairs.
Giant wrenches were soon at work as the grinning women disassembled the components of the well-head and began to pull the long tie rods out of the hole.
My 17-year-old daughter accompanied me on my first trip to Ethiopia to take still photos for the film, and loved sharing home-baked barley bread and homegrown honey with the locals. Personal income averages $1/day, and it’s a testament to the villagers’ generosity that they share so much when they have so little.
Not far from the volatile Eritrean border, we were visiting the pastoral community of Bet Mekea when I asked the locals what might come next after their new well. I was expecting the response a request for new classrooms, but the villagers told me that two neighboring villages still lacked clean water. They didn’t think it was right for one community to receive more before the others had water of their own.
I didn’t have the money to fund a well, but promised that our education nonprofit, The Nobelity Project, would try to find it.
Six months later I was back in Ethiopia to see the first of six wells we were funding through Glimmer. At one of the villages near Bet Mekea, the locals were disappointed that Katie hadn’t returned with me. They remembered that she’d loved the local honey, and this time had brought a true delicacy, several pounds of Ethiopian white honey. (I discovered what a treasure this was a few days later when tears came to the eyes of a bellman at a hotel in Addis Ababa who I allowed to taste it.) I carried the honey home to Texas and we’ve used it for months to sweeten our hand-roasted Ethiopian coffee, another gift of thanks.
Photo by Turk Pipkin
The people of Ethiopia touched my heart in the same way that the careful and dedicated work of A Glimmer of Hope has marked my mind.
I’d love to see the Obama Administration increase the pitiful amount we spend on foreign aid by funding large numbers of water projects through a Glimmer of Hope and similar proven organizations across the world. In the meantime, you and I can do our part by supporting this work at: aglimmerofhope.org.
To learn more about all of the solutions in One Peace at a Time – or to watch the film’s trailer featuring Ben Harper’s song “Better Way” –go to www.nobelity.org.
Thanks so much for starting this blog. I just read the article about the work of A Glimmer of Hope in Ethiopa and your documenting that work. All I can say is . . . another Austin Turk miracle! Thank you for all you do.
I will contribute to this project, eventually and soon! This month, all the money’s gone–I live on a small social security pension–age 66. In true Austin fashion, however, I’m currently applying to the Peace Corps–and just got back last January from Bulgaria where I was an in-house English teacher to a family there).
And I’ll find a way to send your blog to the White House and others like Lloyd Doggett if you haven’t already!
Thanks, Jenell. Perfect that you mention Lloyd Doggett who, along with Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Yunus, Helene Gayle, Steve Chu and Willie Nelson, is one of the smart people I talk to in One Peace at a Time. I’m working on a future piece for dogcanyon that stems from Doggett’s thoughts on how much money we spend on the military and whether it makes us more secure.