Mom and Dad’s water development project in our village of Mwika will be featured in an upcoming PBS documentary called Drops of Hope. 

They recently met with Emmy-Award winning filmmakers Kris Koenig and Anita Ingrao who were shooting a documentary that critically examines “volunteerism and service in Tanzania, and the efforts to establish permanent sources and storage of water in this impoverished country.”

Also featured in this documentary is Chico attorney Ron Reed, a public defender who first visited Tanzania in 2004 and saw how “people were drinking contaminated water from swamps and mud holes, that women and children were carrying 5-gallon buckets, often on their heads, 3 or 4 miles a day.”  He left Tanzania feeling inspired to learn all he could about the fundamentals of water drilling, and to investigate how lightweight well-drilling rigs could be affordably shipped to East Africa. 

Reed now travels to Kilolo 4-5 times a year, occasionally accompanied by a well-drilling rig.  He started a vocational school to teach women and men how to drill wells.  Thus far, the  “Kilolo Star Well Drillers have completed 64 wells and expect to drill 50 wells a year for the next four years. Our goal is to teach people to build the rigs themselves and go to other villages and drill wells.”

In a world where 50% of all water projects fail in the first few years, this filmmaking team will be examining the ins and outs of these two independently successful water programs in Tanzania.