Addax & Oryx Foundation Update

SAVE THE RAIN ADDAX & ORYX FOUNDATION AUGUST 2024

WHAT HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED

56

35

35

$29,995

Residential Tanks built

Women Employed

Residential Greenhouses built

Dollars Invested

WHAT’S NEXT

24

45

45

1

Residential Tanks to be built

Women to be employed

Residential Greenhouses to be built

Large community greenhouse to be built at the primary school

We know that the world will not change by the efforts of one but through collaborations with those with like-minded objectives. The best partnerships create change bigger than the sum of what each can make on their own.

Without partnerships like this one with Addax and Oryx, the power of Save the Rain’s work would be felt in a smaller way. The best way to describe the impact of your generosity is to share one woman’s story as it expresses the incredible ripple your contribution has and will continue to create for many. We cannot express enough gratitude for helping us cast a wider net so that more people have the resources to build safe and abundant lives.

With so much gratitude, Kelly Coleman Executive Director, Save the Rain

ADVELA’S STORY

Advela’s husband died last year, leaving behind five children and a baby on the way. She was a widow and new mother all at once, needing more than she ever had and less able to provide than ever before.

Her life was a dystopian math problem: if Advela has 24 hours in a day, six children to feed, clothe, and educate, 0 means of generating income, and 80 liters of water requiring at least 8 hours to fetch, costing money she doesn’t have… how does Advela survive?

She lives in Nsengoni, where we received funding to construct 80 residential rainwater harvesting systems for families most in need. The selection process wasn’t easy. Here, everyone suffers from undrinkable groundwater. The marginally more potable alternative is far away and often unavailable. The women’s daily quest is all-consuming. The fatigue in their eyes is profound.

We were with Advela the day construction began. She watched Anna and her crew of women unload cement and sand, making light work of heavy materials.

Their strength makes the labor seem effortless. To see their ease, their lightness of being, you wouldn’t know that each has lived the same desperate scarcity as the women of Nsengoni.

Anna and her team are harbingers of change. They are manifestations of what is possible when women are freed from enslavement to water. Each tank they build bridges the gap between the giver and the receiver. It is a hand extended – an invitation to step into power.

Advela’s tank took them just six days to complete and was ready in time for the long rainy season’s beginning. The transformation was immediate: from nothing, she suddenly had more than she could use: laundry, cooking, drinking, and washing. Each day, the rain replenished whatever she depleted.

Just one inch falling on 500 sq ft of roof harvests 300 gallons, which would have taken her 60 trips and ten days and nights of nonstop walking to collect.

But she has reclaimed so much more than time — her strength, energy, health, and vitality. There is a spark in her eyes that wasn’t there before. She holds herself differently. She has her own plot of farmland now. She is growing corn and beans to feed her family. The greenhouse she received with her tank is full.

Her bounty of harvests should yield enough to sell, too.

What was once an intractable equation that multiplied scarcity and desperation has become a life of sweet sufficiency, from which boundless possibility has only just begun to ripple out.

The solution was simple: just add water.