Kim D R Findlay 1960-2023

We are sad to report the death of our dear friend and fellow Trustee, Kim Findlay, on June 22nd 2023 after a three and a half year battle with cancer. He leaves his wife Sarah and two children Holly and Fred.

He remained brave and positive throughout his illness and continued to work tirelessly for Alive & Well securing new potential sponsers and funders.  He was one of the first 5 Trustees who helped raise the initial funds to buy a Dando percussion rig, drilling equipment and landrover which we shipped to Sierra Leone.   The team then paid for themselves to fly out and start the adventure of drilling the first wells villages in the Pujehun region had ever had.  His unyeilding work and dedication to the charity as a founder member is going to be difficult to manage without, but we will endeavour continue the work we do in his memory and hope his legacy of over 100 wells and over 2000 people finally living with clean water will make his family and friends proud of his achievements and the charity he helped start.

Our three remaining trustees will miss his company, his humour and his spirit and will ensure his endeavours are not forgotten.

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This is the well site in the village of Día which is a remote village of 800 people, located across the Moa river to the east of Barri.

In 2015, after the floods subsided from the rainy season, Alive & Well managed to send the rig and drilling team across to this village and drill a third well primarily to serve the Dia school.  Wells are typically able to serve up to 200 people and so it was clear the two wells we had already supplied to the village were struggling to keep up with the demand for a consistent supply throughout the year.   This third well was achieved by funding from several sources, but mainly through an incredible effort by the pupils of Marksbury Primary School and the organisation of Barnaby Elphick, one of our founding Trustees who we sadly lost to cancer in 2019, aged just 65.  Through their fundraising sufficient money was raised to buy the pump and pay for our team to get to the site and drill the new bore hole.

Now, some 7 years later the pump seals and liner were beginning to fail from the constant use, so we arranged for the team to revisit, fit the spares we supplied and complete this vital repair.  In celebration of Barnaby’s memory we are also mounting a memorial plaque in the village so that his work and the dedication he showed to our charity and the children of this village will never be forgotten.

We are pleased to report the well is now once again providing an excellent supply of clean water and the villages want to thank all who donated and who made this possible.  The two schools have also maintained contact with each other and the pupils continue to enjoy written exchanges and photographs.

If you would like to help a village in this region, sponsor a well or contribute any donation so that we can continue our work in this area, we would love to hear from you and assure you that every penny donated will help with the provision of clean water for the people of this still beleaguered country.

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Members of the Bandsuma village group around their repaired second pump.  For larger villages there is an essential requirement for two independent water sources to maintain consistency and supply, and cater for the needs of the residents.  They said ‘the repair to our second well was vital to our village and the health of our children and we are elated to have our well working efficiently with clean water again’.

If you feel you can assist these remote villages gaining clean water, please contact us, or provide a donation, any amount large or small would be hugely appreciated and will 100% go toward the provision or repair of wells in this region of great need.

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This is a repair in the village of Dia with the local people waiting patiently for the first bucket after the restoration of water to the community.

(apologies for the picture quality)

and this in Basu a nearby village taken on the same day,

In Bandasuma there was a small celebration when the pump was restored to full working order.

The work continues.

We hope to bring further news of a return to drilling new wells in 2022/3, but this is dependant on further funding and so we are reaching out to our sponsors and donors to see if we are able to raise the extra monies required.

Thank you to everyone who has donated so far, every penny goes to saving lives.

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Provisional repairs however are rarely satisfactory so it becomes a priority to get more permanent measures in place as soon as possible.  Of course it is all down to funding and as soon as we have funds to buy the appropriate new parts, the team are sent out to the problem wells to correct the temporary repair.

When we achieve this the celebrations can be clearly seen on the faces of the children and teachers in the schools and villages when the clean reliable water source has been re-established.

This is Shenge School, near the coast in Western Pujehun.  The pupils were photographed at the inaugural pumping of the well after the new and long term repair of their pump!

They are so grateful for this water and thank everyone who may have contributed to Alive & Well in order for this repair to be undertaken.

Please donate if you feel you are able,  every £1 counts and can help with the costs of maintaining and repairing wells and improving the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves.

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Tony was a strong, creative and dynamic character, always willing to be involved and offer his expertise, humour and wealth of knowledge in so many areas.  He worked closely with us on our choice of new vehicle for towing the drilling rig in Sierra Leone and then in the acquisition of the fire truck ‘Ma!’ which he also helped collect from Berlin and drive to the UK.   He assisted with many of the technicalities involved in our drilling systems and was always available to offer invaluable advice when needed.

Tony was respected and loved by many and leaves his wife Karen, son Max and daughter Kate. They are much in our thoughts and despite the hardships they have faced we know they will continue the great work of Rory’s Well in both his and Rory’s memory.

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Due to various problems the village of Njala has been without use of their well for some time and this has been of great concern to both Alive & Well and the PDO (our in country NGO).  Finally however we have managed to raise sufficient funds and overcome the various other obstacles preventing the repair and were able to give the go ahead for our team to travel there with all the necessary parts.

This was completed last week and clean water was re-established in the village

As always this could not  have been done without the generosity of our supporters and so Alive and Well, Senesi Fawundi of the PDO and of course all the villagers of offer their great thanks to everyone who has over the last few weeks been able to make a donation, even if it may have been only a few pounds,  it finally made clean water in Njala Village possible.  In circumstances like this just the smallest of amounts will sometimes make the difference between being able to go ahead or not.

You can make a difference to a village by donating today or setting up a standing order for as little as £3.00 a month which will transform the lives of people in villages such as Njala.  We are desperate for more funding and ask that if you sometimes feel you want to help people who are worse off than yourself, you consider a donation.  This can be done easily and made through any of the methods on our donating pages if you feel able.

As always we thank you for reading this latest post and look forward to keeping friends of Alive & Well updated as we proceed to repair, maintain and perhaps drill more wells in this region.

Many thanks

The post Clean water returns to Njala Village appeared first on Alive and Well.

When we first became aware of the village it already had a well, but demand on the supply was more than the low volume pump could cope with, it became unreliable and failed in the dry season which meant the village had to resort to returning to nearby contaminated springs.  In 2013 we agreed to drill 2 new wells in different locations in the village each fitted with one of our trusted India Mk2 hand pumps in order to ensure adequate supply throughout the year.

To access the village the drilling team needed to navigate with our heavy truck and drilling rig across the river via a ferry crossing in Jaiwulo (recently thankfully, a new bridge has started construction,  which will make life considerably easier for future maintenance/drilling trips!)

In 2015 we realised there was a further urgent need for an additional well at the Dia Primary School situated on the outskirts of the village.  Although short of funds, we were able to do this due to the untiring work of our late Trustee Barnaby Elphick and the amazing fundraising efforts of the children, staff and parents of Marksbury Primary School.

During the drilling of this well in Dia, Barnaby whose son attended the Marksbury school, worked with both schools to develop a regular line of communication.  This established a great lasting relationship and in 2016 Marksbury School went on to also provide valuable additional teaching materials and books to the Dia school.

The repair to this well was recently successfully completed and the school once again have water without needing to walk into the village centre.

Here we can see water is being pumped by one of the teachers as pupils look on.  Such proximity to a clean water supply has a great benefit to the school and they want to offer their deep gratitude to all our sponsors for keeping our maintenance team funded so that this repair could be completed.

It takes only a few pounds to repair a well and ensure a continued water supply.  If you think you can afford a small amount to enable a school or a village to maintain their well, we would love to hear from you.   Donations can be made easily through any of the links on this site, we can arrange for the gift aid to be added if you are a UK tax payer and you will be helping the children and by extension, the future of Sierra Leone.

Thank you

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We have tried introducing filters into the system, but these tend to get clogged fairly quickly and are too inaccessible to continually clean.  We have had to accept the limitations of the system we use and work on the replacement of parts as they become worn.  We hope we will eventually be able to look at pumps that will have integral filters, but these are currently beyond our means, and obtaining clean water from less reliable pumps is better than no water!

Seals have just been changed on this well in Golawoma village.

It is the tradition in many regions of Sierra Leone for water to still be collected from the nearest rivers and springs by the women of the villages.  This often means walking considerable distances, carrying heavy containers full of water.  When a well is established in a village we try to locate it in the most accessible position for the village, usually near the centre (dependant on the geology of the situation).  This allows everyone easy access, it minimises the time consuming and laborious collection activities, the need for water storage is reduced and time is thereby created for more essential productive work such as tending to crops and trades by both men and women.

If you would like to know more about what we do, or would like to make a donation to our charity, we would love to hear from you, please do not hesitate to contact us using the contact form here contact Alive & Well

We love the support we receive and are always grateful to new donors, please help if you are able and be assured that every penny will go some way to saving people from a life without clean water.

Thank you

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After just a few hours, the work was completed and the village was once again able to draw clean fresh water.

Because of the difficulty in raising sufficient funds to buy the necessary parts (even though in Western terms they may be cheap and plentifully available), sourcing parts of a suitable quality is often an issue.  This combined with sometimes challenging access to villages can inevitably lead to delays in vital repairs.  In this instance the people of Bevehun village had been surviving without a working well for several weeks.

Fortunately it has been the rainy season and some water was captured and stored to tie them over, but this is not a perfect solution.  An irony of the region, is that during the rainy season, there is an abundance of water (too much in the monsoons!) but there is limited facility for safe storage in any quantity and containers soon become vulnerable to infestation by bacteria or disease and fall a long way short of providing sufficient water in the hot, dry summer months.

Maintaining the wells is therefore paramount.  We have very limited financial resources and there is always more call on the funding we have than we are able to support.  We therefore live from month to month spreading what funds we have and prioritising the needs of different villages.  We could do so much more with even a few small additional donations.   We make no profit, the trustees are all unpaid and work relentlessly to achieve more with what we have.  Every donation is used 100% for keeping these wells running and we hope that at some point in the future, we will even be able to get back to drilling wells again in new villages that are desperate for them.

If you are able to assist us and help maintain one of the 80+ wells we now support, please take a minute and use any of the options on these pages to make a small donation.

Many thanks

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