Water for Good, a cooperating ministry in the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches, has announced the formation of the first-ever locally owned water well drilling business in the Central African Republic. The announcement came first in their annual report and today was posted on Facebook. Read the Facebook post below in its entirety.
We’ve got a pretty significant announcement (you may have already seen it in our annual report).
Together with our supporters, staff, and local communities we are seeking to solve the water crisis—FOR GOOD. The hard truth is that a US-based non-profit organization like us doing all the drilling and maintaining of the county’s wells is not a sustainable long-term solution, even if it has been a necessary first step.
Our goal has always been to work ourselves out of job—training and equipping locals to overcome the problems faced by their communities. Although you may not have been aware of it, we made a significant step towards that goal at the beginning 2015. We helped to established the first ever local Central African owned water well drilling business—Marcellin African Drilling (MAD).
How does that work? The new for-profit business is led by Marcellin Namsene, our former head of well-drilling operations. When implementing a Water for Good project, we contract MAD to do the work, using our equipment. MAD can also pursue their own local contracts, meeting the needs of local non-profits, businesses, and communities. In these cases, MAD leases the vehicles and equipment from Water for Good.
We’re unbelievably excited to see where this goes! We have a solid start already, with all 50 wells drilled in 2015 completed under the new model.
Please join us in our journey to build a local, Central African private business that’s able to thrive and provide new wells to everyone in rural CAR, with or without Water for Good.