Speaking to... Upendo

Up until recently, Upendo didn't go attend school as she had to collect water for her family...

"Hello, I am Upendo, I am 12 years old and I love to dance and skip with my best friends. I live in Ghana with my mother, father and two younger brothers who are 6 and 8 years old. My father is a farmer and grows food to sell and for us to eat and my mother stays at home to look after us all and collects our water.

I stopped going to school when I was 9 because I needed to help my mother collect the water every day for our family. I liked going to school and learning about different things, especially maths, as I was good at adding up but now I can’t go. I help my brothers with their homework sometimes because I miss learning but I get upset that my brothers get to go to school every day with their friends when I can’t. I need to help my mother collect clean water from the well so we can wash ourselves and so my dad can water his crops.

I don't like collecting water because it’s difficult and it makes me not feel very well. The pot that I carry water in makes my back ache on the walk back and my feet have blisters and are sore. My mother has to make me stop on the way home because sometimes I get dizzy from the heat and can’t see properly and if I dropped the pot of water we have to go back and it takes us hours. We also have to get home before it gets dark and otherwise we are not very safe and men shout at us and touch us when we don't want them too.

I wish the well was closer to our home because then it would take us so much less time to collect and I might be able to go back to school again and learn. I wish I could be like my brothers who get to go to school but I am a girl so I have to help in our house. My other friends who are girls stay at home and collect water too, that is just our job.

When I have some spare time I go outside and pretend to teach children because my dream is to be a teacher and help other girls and boys learn lots of different things but my parents say that I need to keep collecting water because otherwise we can’t grow food to eat."

...but with your support, Empower and our fantastic volunteers have built 2 water wells in her local community so now she can fulfill her dreams, and attend school.

On behalf of Upendo, her fellow school friends and their families, we say THANK YOU.

You can help girls just like Upendo by donating, with just one click of a button. Please, empower African girls today, for a freer and happier tomorrow.

Speaking to... Selph

Selph Ihungu Imalo - Arusha village, Tanzania

I first met Gabriella when she was working with an organisation helping to build schools in the community and she asked if I would speak to her about my life. She asked about why my daughter, Angel, was not in school but instead helping me to collect water for our household. I told her, in this community, the role of a female is seen to be in the kitchen, it is seen to provide for our family. 

Upon my daughter turning 10, she could no longer keep on attending school as her help was needed to collect water from the wells. I have collected water for my household for 37 years and it was becoming impossible to carry on. I am HIV positive and I was becoming increasingly more ill. My husband decided that it was no longer safe for me to carry on and that is when the responsibility fell on to my beloved girl, Angel.

Carrying the pots from the well is not easy. It is a 3 hour round trip and you have to take breaks. Every time she left the house each morning to start her journey to the well, I would say a prayer and would worry until she returned. Then she became unwell. She contracted cholera and began vomiting and had diarrhoea. It is impossible to have for girls and women in this community to have good hygiene. We walk long miles, we are dusty and dirty and there are no sufficient facilities. You become helpless when your child is sick. You don’t know what to do. Gabriella came back last year and told me she had started an organisation to help and empower girls and women, by starting projects to build wells closer to our homes. It was then that I told her my daughter had passed away a couple of months before.

I feel so much sorrow and so much guilt that my child has left this world and I am still here but I am now so thankful for the work Empower are doing in my community . Access to clean, safe water enables so many of our girls to start learning again. If one less young child dies because of a water related illness contracted through the collection of water from the wells, this village can become a little happier, and life can become a little easier, each day.

"Donate what you can and come on this journey with us, to empower these African girls today, for a freer and happier tomorrow."

Welcome to Empower.

Talk to any girl in Africa and she will tell you exactly what she wants.

She wants an education. She wants a career. She wants to make a contribution other than to the household.

She wants to be a teacher, a lawyer, a politician, a world leader.

A financially independent woman.

There’s something stopping these girls fulfilling their dreams. Fulfilling dreams that we take for granted.

Water.

Access to water.

Lack of access to safe water and sanitation is the primary reason girls drop out of school. African culture sees a women’s place as in the kitchen, looking after the family and collecting water for their household. In Sub Saharan African, 68% of the rural population spend more than 1 hour per trip of water collection making it impossible for girls to attend school.

Safe water unlocks a community’s girls to learn, to develop and to experience the life they want to lead.

Here at Empower, we need your help.

We need your help to give these girls the freedom to carry out their dreams and the only way to do this is with convenient access to safe and clean water.

Just £1 can make the difference.

Donate what you can and come on this journey with us, to empower these African girls today, for a freer and happier tomorrow.