Recent Posts

Clean water is life: Improvements to wells in Zambia

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Samuel Mwanangombe in Causes

Samuel Mwinda Mwanangombe is World Vision’s design, monitoring, and evaluation officer for the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) program in Zambia. Samuel has worked for World Vision for three years, motivated by the opportunity to improve the quality of life for vulnerable and marginalized people — especially orphans, widows, and those with disabilities — by helping them realize their own potential to be agents of change. He is dedicated to WASH because he’s seen firsthand the changes it has produced in communities and the lives of children. Samuel has seen God work through the WASH sector in Zambia, providing those in need with clean water, improved sanitation, and hygiene education to sustain their lives. Here, Samuel shares an example of...

Dirty water for now — but clean water is in the works

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Rachael Dill Boyer in Causes

Water: It’s such a simple thing, but if you don’t have enough, it takes over your life. That’s what 13-year-old Zinhle Dlamini told me. Getting water for her family in rural Swaziland is a two-hour-per-day chore. And the dirty water they get is not nearly enough for all the drinking, cooking, cleaning, and bathing for a household of 10 people....

Warnings of “a community with no food at all”

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Adel Sarkozi in Disaster Relief

The West Africa food crisis continues to intensify as drought tightens its grip on places like Mali. Could entire communities really be left without any food if action isn’t taken? The story of Zama and his family suggests that, indeed, they could....

Dealing with “First World Problems”

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Jonathan Lo in Conversations

My friends and I have a saying that we thought was unique — until we discovered that it already has a popular Twitter hashtag and YouTube video. “First World Problems.” At one time, we thought we’d create a blog based off the concept and make millions that we could donate to charities to save lives. But we weren’t the first to think of the idea. Woe is us. Maybe our disappoint is, in itself, a drop in the bucket of #firstworldproblems....

Q&A with our clean water expert in Uganda

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Rachael Dill Boyer in Causes

Leading up to World Water Day on March 22, we’re going to do a series of posts about our work in the area of water and sanitation, giving you some ideas of how to get involved. Back in November, I got to see some of our clean water programs in northern Uganda, a place that is still scarred by decades of brutal civil war with Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). I never knew how complex the solution to the problem of clean water could be — but I got to learn from some experts and ask a lot of questions. One of the most informative conversations I had was with John Steifel, World Vision’s Uganda water, sanitation, and hygiene...