WILLS POINT, TX — It’s one of the most remarkable stories in the colossal quest to provide clean drinking water to every person on the planet.
The “Jesus Wells” project, a monumental undertaking of Texas-based mission agency GFA World (www.gfa.org), is 25 years old this year — and on the cusp of delivering safe, clean drinking water to its 40 millionth beneficiary.
CLEAN WATER AVAILABLE FOR MILLIONS: The “Jesus Wells” project, a monumental undertaking of Texas-based mission agency GFA World (www.gfa.org), is 25 years old this year — and on the cusp of providing safe drinking water to its 40 millionth beneficiary.
“As we mark World Water Day this month, we’re grateful for all who have sacrificed and labored to make the Jesus Wells project what it is today,” said GFA World founder K.P. Yohannan, also known as Metropolitan Yohan.
So far, the project has supplied reliable, clean drinking water to more than 39 million people in some of the world’s poorest communities — often in remote, parched areas — through a combination of new wells, water pipelines and filters.
This year, it aims to surpass 40 million beneficiaries, launching hundreds of new projects across Africa and Asia.
They’re called “Jesus Wells” because they display a plaque quoting Jesus in the Gospel of John: “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.”
‘Hidden Catastrophe’
According to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, 2.2 billion people worldwide — more than 1 in every 4 — lack safe drinking water.
Every year, it’s estimated more than 500,000 people worldwide die from diseases such as cholera and dysentery due to drinking dirty water.
“It’s a global catastrophe that’s largely hidden from us in America,” Yohannan said.
In Asia, GFA World’s team constructed an almost two-mile-long water pipeline through a mountain rainforest infested with blood-sucking leeches to rescue villagers whose water source was swamped with mud, feces, dead snakes and rotting animal carcasses.
The pipeline feeds water tanks that supply filtered spring water to every home. The organization has installed a similar water system in nine more villages in the area.
Since then, the attitude toward Christians in the area has “completely changed,” Yohannan said.
“They welcome the missionaries into their homes to share God’s love,” he said. “They witnessed for themselves how Christians love and care for people, regardless of their religion or social background.”
About GFA World (formerly Gospel for Asia)
GFA World is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Africa and Asia, and sharing the love of God. In a typical year, this includes thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 880 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 163,000 needy families, and teaching to provide hope and encouragement in 110 languages in 14 nations through broadcast ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit the Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
At Gospel for Asia, we’ve been praying for the water crisis that’s been happening in South Africa. Sometimes I think about it a little more as I take a shower, drink a glass of clean water, or see the rain pouring down. Millions upon millions around the world are wondering where their next drink of water will come from.
Can you imagine waking up this morning at the crack of dawn to wait in line for the water truck to arrive? Maybe you have to dunk your bucket into a dirty old well, because it is your only source of water supply. Your children are getting sick often and you know the brown substance you’re drinking is not ideal. But you have no other choice.
Balab and the other Christians in his village had a problem of their own. They were banned from the public water source—a source that was already polluted and full of bad bacteria. If they needed to get water, they had to wake up early before the sun rose to avoid being beaten or abused. It was an ongoing struggle.
No More Morning Secrets
Before Balab, his wife and five children met Jesus, they were often sick. Malaria, typhoid and jaundice frequently plagued their family, and there seemed to be no end to it. Balab had to start selling his land, cattle and even trees to pay for doctor fees. As sicknesses continued, the bills did too, and eventually Balab had to take out loans from his friends and family members.
Poverty took hold of their lives in more ways than one. Balab and his family were poor in spirit and discouraged. Peace had left their home, and there seemed no hope of help for their family.
But one day, Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported pastor Salm met Balab, and the two men began to talk. Over the course of their conversation, Balab shared with Pastor Salm about his family and their deep discouragement. Balab learned about the hope Salm had in God’s Word and listened to the pastor as he prayed for him and his family.
This is Gospel for Asia-supported pastor Salm and his family. God used him to speak hope into Balab’s life and to bring a Jesus Well for 150 villagers to use.
Pastor Salm visited Balab and his family once a week and saw with his own eyes the struggles they faced. The pastor earnestly prayed for them. Slowly he witnessed how the Lord answered his consistent prayers.
Balab and his family began to heal from their sicknesses, and joy entered their lives. Instead of sorrow, peace came into their home, and they began to go to church. They had experienced Jesus, and now nothing would take that hope away from them—not even opposition.
Rejection, Violence from the Community
When the villagers saw that Balab and his family had begun to follow Christ, they beat them and prohibited them from getting water from the village well or pond. Balab and his family had to wake up early in order to gather water without being harmed. If they didn’t secretly go to the forbidden well, they had to travel nearly a mile and a half to get water from the river.
Jesus Well Provides Safe Drinking Water, and Changes Attitudes Too
Pastor Salm saw this struggle, so he requested a Jesus Well to be drilled in this village. By God’s grace, a Jesus Well was installed, and the village had a new source of clean, safe drinking water for everyone to use. The villager’s hearts began to change toward the believers as they, too, pumped water from the new well.
We, the Gospel for Asia (GFA) community, find great joy in knowing pure water is being given to many villages around Asia! The need is vast, but we know change comes one step at a time. We praise the Lord for the work that has begun and will continue by His grace! And we continue to pray for those in South Africa and Asia who are still struggling without enough water. May the Lord hear our prayers and provide. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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Several billion people around the world live without sufficient access to clean water. Over one billion people lack water supplies. Another 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year.
Cape Town. The water crisis in the Cape Town has commanded headlines around the globe when the African National Congress declared a national state of emergency as the city had expected to run out of drinking water by April. The deadline was moved to July but, during the third week of March, the government announced that the immediate crisis had been averted.
Sao Paulo is Brazil’s financial center. The city of 20 million faced its own Day Zero in 2015. The city turned off its water supply for 12 hours a day, forcing many businesses and industries to shut down.
Beijing. China is home to 20 percent of the world’s population but has only seven percent of the world’s fresh water available. China saw this coming as its economic expansion began to burgeon in 2005. The Minister of Water Resources said that China must “fight for every drop of water or die.” Over 8,000 rivers have “disappeared” in China over the past 25 years.
Cairo. Egypt suffers a water deficit of 30 billion cubic meters. The national government has begun developing a water security strategy that includes desalination, managing wastewater, and rationing water usage. Challenges facing Cairo include the facts that 4.5 billion cubic meters of its water come from non-renewable sources and that its main source of water, the Nile, is a transboundary river.
Jakarta. The capital city of Indonesia faces an unusual compound crisis. The city is literally sinking. Some officials are concerned that it could eventually end up entirely inundated. Forty percent of the city already sits below sea level. Some residents facing water shortages have taken to illegally draining groundwater, which exacerbates the sinking problem.
Moscow. Russia possesses 25 percent of the world’s freshwater reserves, but 70 percent of its water supply is dependent upon surface water. Somewhere between 35 percent to 60 percent of total drinking water reserves do not meet sanitary standards.
Istanbul, Turkey, is now technically under water stress. Experts have warned that, if not checked, the situation could worsen to water scarcity by 2030. The city’s reservoir levels had declined to less than 30 percent of capacity in 2014. Residents of Istanbul have already become accustomed to water shortages during the dry season.
Mexico City. In Mexico City, 20 percent of residents have tap water available only a few hours a week, and another 20 percent have running water just part of the day. As much as 40% of its clean water is brought in from distant sources. And, like Jakarta, the city is sinking, having been constructed over a lake that had been drained by Spanish Settlers. The sinking is placing stresses on the water delivery infrastructure, causing breakage and collapses.
London. Millions of residents have been urged to conserve water as shortages have arisen in Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Sussex, and Surrey due to excessively high demand and crumbling infrastructure. The city draws 80 percent of its water from the Thames and the Lea rivers.
Tokyo is initiating plans to collect rainwater during its four months of high precipitation. Some 750 private and public buildings in the city have water collection and utilization systems. The city’s 30 million residents depend on surface water for 70 percent of their supply.
Miami’s main source of fresh water, the Biscayne Aquifer is facing a water quality problem due to the rising sea level and salt water infiltration. The clean water problem is growing as the city grows by an average of 1,000 people per day, creating not only greater demand for fresh water, but adding the pressure of how to dispose of the additional wastewater.
Even if I (or you) may not be personally affected by water emergencies in the areas where we individually live, modern, urbanized cities around the world are now underwater duress. They serve as the early warning systems that demand correction now and in the future. A March 2018 report World Water Development Report from the UN said that 36 percent of the cities in the world will face a water crisis by 2050.
The World Health Organization has made clean water a priority. According to WHO, “In 2010, The UN General Assembly explicitly recognized the human right to water and sanitation. Everyone has the right to sufficient, continuous, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable water for personal and domestic use.”
Ensuring a safe water supply for families and communities in South Asia has been a significant part of Gospel for Asia (GFA)’s work. We see first-hand the sickness and disease from which people suffer by not having access to clean water.
No one can survive without water. Many people die from water-borne and vector-borne diseases by drinking or being exposed to contaminated water supplies. These diseases and the deaths they cause can be eliminated as we teach the unreached and as we help to provide them with sources of clean water.
We continue, as we have for many years, to provide BioSand water filters for individual families and small communities. Our gifts of Jesus Wells provide water for communities of up to 300 people, providing them an adequate supply of clean water for up to 20 years.
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World) founded by K.P. Yohannan, has been the model for numerous charities like Gospel for Asia Canada, to help the poor and deprived worldwide, discussing Kylan and his village’s struggle with unclean water, and the access to clean water through newly installed GFA World Jesus Wells.
Ten times each day, 20 minutes each way—Kylan and his wife, Esmai, spent cumulative hours on one task. Back and forth, the parents of two performed the same errand. They had to keep doing it for their survival.
Needing Water Every Day
Every day, Kylan and Esmae made the 20-minute journey to their village’s nearest water source. Nearly 10 times a day, depending on how much water they needed, the husband and wife trekked to the waterhole. There, they filled up their water cans as full as they could. Unfortunately, the road to the waterhole curved downhill. Trekking uphill with full jugs several times a day was taxing for Kylan and Esmae and it was even worse during the rainy seasons.
The rain made the roads difficult to traverse, and both husband and wife had fallen multiple times due to the slippery, muddy trails. Sometimes, the rain fell so hard that the road itself flooded, cutting off access to the waterhole. Adding to their misery, during the rainy season the quality of the water was even worse than normal.
“When the water level rises,” Kylan said, “the water from outside actually gets into the well … and the water becomes dirty … but we didn’t have any choice, we had to collect that water and bring it home.”
The water they gathered already was already dirty and untreated on a good day. The family tried to filter the water as best they could, but they could not remove all the pathogens.
“Because of consuming water from that well … we had problems like upset stomachs and even fevers,” Kylan said. “And also, we had skin diseases because of bathing in that water.”
Easily Drawing Clean Water
Thanks, the new Jesus Well, like the one pictured, Kylan’s village now has easy access to clean, pure water.
“We don’t have to go and fetch water from that [old] water source which is time consuming,” Kylan said. “Moreover, the water from the open source was not clean … it was very unhygienic and impure to drink.”
However, the water from the newly installed Jesus Well was clean and pure.
“We didn’t have to filter the water,” Kylan remarked on the Jesus Well, “because the well was dug very deep.”
Nearly everybody in the community uses the Jesus Well now. Kylan said, “The Jesus Well water is more [than] enough for all the villagers here in this village.”
*Names of people and places may have been changed for privacy and security reasons. Images are Gospel for Asia World stock photos used for representation purposes and are not the actual person/location, unless otherwise noted.
Provide a Village with Access to Clean Water. GFA’s clean water program is supplying safe, disease-free water to families across Asia through Jesus Wells. Each Jesus Well offers clean drinking water to roughly 300 people at a cost of less than $5 per person.
Learn more about the GFA World national missionary workers who carry a burning desire for people to know the love of God. Through their prayers, dedication and sacrificial love, thousands of men and women have found new life in Christ.
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (previously Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, whose heart to love and help the poor has inspired numerous charities like Gospel for Asia Canada, to serve the deprived and downcast worldwide, discussing GFA World missionaries meet the need for pure water, fighting waterborne diseases, with BioSand Water Filters.
Families in Pastor Rainart’s area, including Kaigan’s, faced a similar situation. There was a pump well near Kaigan’s house, but it was improperly drilled. As a result, mud entered the well during the rainy seasons, contaminating the water and drastically increasing the risk of infection from disease. Kaigan noted his children would fall ill almost every week, complaining of stomach pains, a tell-tale symptom of dysentery.
The well wasn’t safe to drink from, period. But it was the only source of water available to them.
Within the communities they serve, GFA missionaries like Pastors Gaige and Rainart step up to identify the most pressing needs. But it’s because of gifts from our donors that GFA missionaries can meet these critical needs and demonstrate Christ’s tangible love to men and women in deprivation.
*Names of people and places may have been changed for privacy and security reasons. Images are Gospel for Asia World stock photos used for representation purposes and are not the actual person/location, unless otherwise noted.
Learn more about the GFA World national missionaries who carry a burning desire for people to know the love of God. Through their prayers, dedication and sacrificial love, thousands of men and women have found new life in Christ.
WILLS POINT, TX — Mission agency GFA World (Gospel for Asia) now provides a water lifeline to nearly 40 million desperate people – a number roughly equal to the entire population of California.
Globally, 663 million people lack clean water. Every year, around 500,000 people — including 360,000 children under the age of five — die from waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery and typhoid.
“These are overwhelming numbers,” said GFA World founder K.P. Yohannan, also known as Metropolitan Yohan. “The good news is we can help save many precious lives, one community at a time.”
Texas-based GFA World has installed more than 40,000 wells — called “Jesus Wells” — and 95,000 BioSand water filters, providing safe drinking water to more than 39 million highly vulnerable people in Asia.
‘JESUS WELL’ PROJECT ENDS VILLAGE ‘WATER WOES’: Texas-based mission agency GFA World (http://www.gospelforasia.net) teamed up with a village church in Nepal to dig a “Jesus Well.” The resulting “miracle” means villagers no longer have to drink from contaminated ponds. Across Asia, GFA World’s water projects serve nearly 40 million people.
Altercations Over Water
In one village in Nepal, quarrels and fights sometimes erupted as villagers waited in line for up to two hours to fill their jars at a community water pipe, reduced to a trickle by months of drought.
Aware of their plight, GFA World came alongside the local church to help make a new well a reality. At first, the believers in this mountainside village began digging by hand, but – when they hit solid rock – their task seemed hopeless. A crew with drilling machines arrived to help, but even they soon gave up.
“The pastor had been praying for two years for God to solve the water problem in the community,” Yohannan said. “[The church members] continued to dig manually, and God did a miracle. Breaking through rock at 33-feet deep, they reached a spring.”
Astonished village leaders said, “This is a great service the church has done… you have become a blessing for us.”
Speaking of the community impact, Yohannan said, “Children won’t miss school anymore because of water-hauling duties, and people no longer get sick from drinking contaminated water from dirty ponds and mudholes.”
“Jesus Wells transform entire communities, Yohannan said, showing people “God really cares about them and answers their prayers.”
Give Clean Water, Fresh Hope! — You can help change tragic outcomes caused by water scarcity and waterborne disease. Help provide villages and families with clean, safe drinking water and give them fresh hope.
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World), founded by KP Yohannan issued the second part of a Special Report update authored by Palmer Holt of InChrist Communications on solving the world water crisis, lasting solutions and major initiatives to defeat the age-old problem.
Gospel for Asia’s clean water ministry is delivering pure drinking water to families all across South Asia through Jesus Wells, which are open to anyone in need, regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds. In this regard, Jesus Wells typically meet the urgent needs of poor families for clean water, rescuing their families from waterborne diseases, poverty and even death.
Tapping Into the World’s Largest Reservoir
In his poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes a crew of thirsty sailors stranded on the ocean. One of them utters these familiar lines:
Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.
That’s an apt description of our world, in which people are desperate for water even though it covers 71 percent of the earth’s surface. Of course, most of it is in the oceans and not drinkable. Indeed, 97.5 percent of the earth’s water is saltwater. A person who drinks too much of it will die—ironically—of dehydration.
Granot desalination plant, Israel: Daslination here works by pushing saltwater into membranes containing microscopic pores. Photo by Mekorot Water Company (via IrishTimes.com)
However, visionaries have long hoped that someday we could harness the oceans’ vast water reserves for human use. That dream began to come true in 1881, when the first commercial desalination plant opened on the Mediterranean island of Malta. As methods improved during the 20th century, more plants opened in Europe, the United States and, especially, the Middle East. The desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia, oil-rich but water-poor, now produces more desalinated water than any other country. The nearby United Arab Emirates derives all of its drinking water from desalination. These countries are trading what they have—oil wealth—for what they desperately need—water. But in most of the world, the process has remained too costly to be a viable option.
A dramatic change occurred in 2005 when Israel opened its mega-capacity desalination plant in the coastal city of Ashkelon. This landmark achievement drastically lowered the cost of desalination while providing 13 percent of the country’s consumer water demand. Before, the country’s main sources of fresh water had been the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River that flows from it. But drought and overuse had depleted both resources to dangerously low levels. Israel had a strong motivation to find new, reliable sources of usable water. The Mediterranean Sea on its western border made desalination an obvious alternative.
After the success of the Ashkelon project, Israel launched another plant a few miles up the coast in Hadera in 2009. That was followed by the Sorek plant in 2013, which is currently the world’s largest desalination plant. Israel now uses desalinated water for more than half of its needs. The cost of that water—which had always been the major drawback of desalination—is now even lower. At about $30 per month per household, Israelis pay less for their water than many people in other developed countries.
The Ashkelon desalination facility along the Mediterranean Sea in Israel, is one of the largest in the world, and is one of five plants providing Israelis with 65 percent of their drinking water.Photo by IDE Technologies Ltd., (via TimesofIstrael.com)
Filters Make Contaminated Water Safe
In much of the world, people rely on surface water for drinking and washing. But that water often contains dangerous toxins or pathogens. In those cases, people face the difficult choice of choosing between drinking tainted water and going thirsty.
One of the most common—and deadly—symptoms of waterborne diseases is diarrhea. It kills millions of people every year, most of them in Africa and South Asia. Children, being especially vulnerable, suffer the worst. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2,195 children die of diarrheal diseases every day. Other waterborne illnesses include polio, tetanus, typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery and hepatitis A.
Waterborne illnesses are prevalent in Asia, but when dirty water is cleaned and purified through BioSand water filters, diseases can be prevented.
The tragedy is that such diseases can be easy to prevent. One study showed that the incidence of diarrhea can be reduced by 40 percent if people simply wash their hands regularly with soap.
Another effective weapon against disease is amazingly simple and affordable: a BioSand water filter, which costs just $30 and is small and portable enough to fit in any home. It removes most of the contaminants in water, making it 98 percent pure. With just one BioSand water filter, an entire family can enjoy clean water for as long as 20 years. Gospel for Asia (GFA) has been partnering to provide BioSand water filters to Asian families since 2008, distributing more than 73,500 so far. And the results have been dramatic.
Nirmala’s story is typical and illustrates the impact these simple devices can make. She lives in a small Asian village where the only water source is a small polluted pond.
“Since we drank from the pond on a daily basis,” Nirmala says, “we were frequently contracting diseases and stomach problems. Our symptoms ranged from headaches to skin problems to internal pain. It was a very painful and discouraging way to live.”
Then, a Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported worker visited Nirmala’s village and told her about the difference a BioSand water filter could make.
“A team soon came and installed a filter in my home,” she says. “My family and I were so happy to receive such an amazing gift.”
Now, health has returned to Nirmala’s family. And an entire village is being transformed.
No electricity or batteries are needed for a BioSand water filter like this one. Through natural ways of killing harmful bacteria, these effective filters turn dirty water sources into pure, fresh drinking water. Women like these, and their children and families, who were sick and even dying from waterborne illnesses are now regaining their strength, health and well-being through the clean water they are able to drink from BioSand filters.
A Better Future is Possible
These accounts show what is possible when goodwill and knowledge combine. But they also remind us that the world water crisis is far from being solved.
Water from Jesus Wells is so safe and tasty, this girl’s family will safely use it for drinking, cooking, bathing, washing utensils, doing laundry and more.
The United Nations has described concrete objectives for defeating the world’s water problems in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Among other things, the participating member states committed to “end poverty in all its forms” and “shift the world on to a sustainable and resilient path.” But so far, the world is “off track” in achieving those objectives, according to the UN’s Synthesis Report 2018 on Water and Sanitation. The report states that, to be more effective, efforts must address issues of “weak funding, planning, capacity and governance of water and sanitation services as a top priority.”
But as the villagers depicted in this article demonstrate, the best solutions don’t always come from top-down efforts imposed from outside. Rather, they arise from cooperative efforts that involve local residents in the construction, maintenance and acceptance of their own sustainable solutions. Relief agencies that respect the dignity and freedom of the people they serve offer the best hope for success.
If you’d like to make a personal impact on the world water crisis, consider giving a needy family a simple BioSand water filter. For only $30, Gospel for Asia’s field partners can manufacture and distribute one of these effective filters to a water-compromised family in Asia and provide them with clean, safe water. Other NGOs that are making a difference in regard to the world water crisis include water.org, which makes microloans to families to install clean water solutions in their homes, and Charity: Water, which partners with organizations worldwide to provide safe water solutions to the 10 percent of the world’s population that lacks access to clean water.
Together, we can end the world’s water crisis.
Men like these help build BioSand water filters for countless families in Asia. They start by pouring wet cement into these metal molds and go from there. These filters require no electricity to use, yet they make water almost as pure as bottled water!
This Special Report originally appeared on gfa.org. We also have a growing list of Clean Water FAQs that address various clean water concerns around the globe.
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World), founded by KP Yohannan issued the first part of a Special Report update authored by Palmer Holt of InChrist Communications on solving the world water crisis, including major initiatives to defeat the age-old problem.
For millions of people around the world, finding clean water is a daily struggle. Like all of us, they need water to drink, to wash in and to grow their crops. When they can’t find it, terrible things happen: Farmers lose their livelihoods; people suffer the slow, insidious effects of chronic dehydration; entire families contract dysentery or arsenic poisoning; and too often, people die.
The issue is really twofold: 1) In many places, there simply isn’t enough water available; and 2) Often, the water that people do have is contaminated. Remedies exist for both problems, ranging from complex and costly to astonishingly simple. But sadly, most of the people who desperately need these solutions don’t have access to them—yet.
This drilling rig is used to create a Jesus Well. Machines like this one will drill bore wells more than 600 feet deep, allowing up to 300 families a day to draw good, clean water even in the driest seasons.
For many of them, each day begins with a trek to the nearest waterhole, which may be miles away. Life becomes a dreary quest for survival as they spend precious hours seeking the day’s supply of water. That leaves little time or energy for more productive activities. It’s no surprise that so many remain mired in abject poverty.
• In arid regions, there may be ample water during the rainy season, but then the water table recedes during the dry months. Wells are often too shallow to reach this deeper water, so they become inactive.
The solution: drill deeper.
This is the strategy now being employed by city authorities in urban areas like Bangalore, India, where an exploding population has strained water resources to the limit. The older wells in the city were typically 300 feet deep. Now, newer wells reach depths of up to 1,500 feet to tap the hidden reserves. And for the time being, they’re meeting the city’s burgeoning needs.
This approach is also being used effectively by private relief agencies, such as Gospel for Asia (GFA World). Through Jesus Wells installed by its field partners, Gospel for Asia (GFA) has helped bring year-round water to many villages in South Asia, each well serving an average of 300 people. By drilling wells more than 600 feet down, villagers can access the deep water that was unreachable before. And Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported Jesus Wells are built to last up to two decades.
In one Asian village, 15 families were relying on water from a polluted pond, convinced that a well would be impossible in their rocky hillside terrain. But through the intervention of a local Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported pastor, workers drilled through the solid rock and found water. Most importantly, the workers didn’t stop there. They kept drilling to reach the deeper parts of the water table. That well now provides consistent water for the villagers even through the dry seasons.
• Another common problem has to do with well maintenance. Many well-intentioned organizations come into undeveloped areas and spend their time and money installing wells. But then they leave. The villagers often don’t know how to maintain the wells, so these valuable resources become useless. As a result, in Africa alone, an estimated 50,000 such projects now lie abandoned.
The remedy is to bring local people into the projects from the start
so they feel an ownership stake, and then show them how to maintain the wells for the long term. In an effort to provide lasting solutions, Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported field partners use local workers who use locally produced components to install the wells, and then they help train the villagers themselves to maintain the wells. As a result, those wells have stood the test of time. Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported workers recently revisited one of their earliest well installations and were pleasantly surprised to find it still operational—20 years later. Because of that well, life in the village has changed dramatically.
As Saamel, one of the villagers, observes, “Now people don’t have to go to distant places to fetch water.”
Furthermore, the impact of a clean water well on Arnab and his family in Asia can be watched online.
We also have a growing list of Clean Water FAQs that address various clean water concerns around the globe.
Of course, that well has needed periodic maintenance during its 20 years of service. And when it did, the local villagers stepped up.
Saamel notes, “Whenever this Jesus Well breaks down or needs some maintenance or repair, people in this village contribute money and they actually get it fixed.” As a result, “There has been no time that this Jesus Well is not in use … people been using it ever since that was installed.”
That marks a stark contrast to other wells in the area that provided foul-tasting water and eventually broke down. Now, Saamel observes, people from three nearby villages come to use the Jesus Well for its clean, reliable water.
“The water is very good and tasty and safe to drink,” he says. “So people don’t have to go to other water source, and they used this water for drinking and domestic chores, for giving to the cattle or whatever need they have, cleaning and washing; they used this water almost for everything. So, this well has been great help and great use for the entire villagers.”
As this story makes clear, encouraging people to invest in their own infrastructure is one key to making these lifesaving improvements sustainable.
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, has been the model for numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to help the poor and deprived worldwide, issued this second part of a special report on fresh water: an increasingly scarce resource more vital than oil or gold.
These women in Assam have to visit the river several times daily to fetch water that is dirty, muddy and becoming increasingly scarce.
Watergen’s president, Michael Mirilashvili, told the BBC that its system alleviates the need to build water transportation systems, dispelling worries about heavy metals in pipes, cleaning contaminated groundwater, or polluting the planet with plastic bottles.[22]
“A study conducted by scientists from Israel’s Tel Aviv University found that even in urban areas … it is possible to extract drinking water to a standard set by the World Health Organization,” wrote business reporter Natalie Lisbona. “In other words, clean water can be converted from air that is dirty or polluted.”[23]
Watergen’s isn’t the only such technology being developed. A story by science journalist Duane Chavez outlined two others.
The first is a system proposed by engineers from the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Wisconsin. It uses carbon paper evaporators and condensers that emit more energy than they absorb, reducing the temperature below the dew point to achieve vapor condensation.
The other is a passive system developed by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. It extracts water from dry air by consuming solar energy, based on a new type of porous material called Metal-Organic Frameworks.[24]
Other methods to address freshwater scarcity include the following:
Scientists from the UK’s University of Manchester are working on a desalination alternative—a graphite oxide sieve that retains salt and only allows water to pass through. In 2019, the university’s National Graphene Institute began collaborating with a portable water filtration company to develop new water purification devices based on this technology.[25]
LifeStraw is a plastic tube nearly nine inches long and about an inch wide that has a filtration system to remove protozoa, bacteria and other harmful materials from water. One unit can provide personal water filtration for up to three years. The technology is marketed in bottle format as well as in larger systems and has been used in places like Haiti, Rwanda and Pakistan.[26]
A “Safe Water Book” developed by a chemist and her husband contains tear-out pages that are water filters and can provide germ-free water for four years. Their company, Folia Water, has tested the product in Africa, Asia and Latin America and begun distribution in Bangladesh. A similar product, “The Drinkable Book,” has been developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.[27]
Associate Professor Haolan Xu leads a team of researchers at the University of South Australia who have developed a device to help with water purification. Photo by University of South Australia
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of South Australia have refined a technique to derive fresh water from sea water, brackish water or contaminated water through solar evaporation. The device includes a photothermal structure that sits on the surface of a water source and converts sunlight to heat, rapidly evaporating the uppermost portion of the liquid.[28]
“We have developed a technique that not only prevents any loss of solar energy, but actually draws additional energy from the bulk water and surrounding environment,” said Haolan Xu, the associate professor who leads the team. “[That means] the system operates at 100 percent efficiency for the solar input and draws up to another 170 percent energy from the water and environment.”[29]
Assam: The only water available in this rural village has a very bad odor and taste. If stored in a container, the color of the water changes and a layer of chemicals can be seen. The water has all been contaminated by arsenic, but is being ingested by the entire community.
Sometimes the solutions aren’t as dazzling but still matter, as demonstrated in San Antonio. The southern Texas city found itself in a legal battle 31 years ago over arguments it pumped too much water from the Edwards Aquifer, a major groundwater source. The Sierra Club’s victory in the case forced San Antonio to limit withdrawals.[30]
Conservation efforts that followed included better irrigation and landscaping, installation of water flow sensors, and rebates to residents who install pool filters or convert grass into patios. Despite 80% growth in their population since 1991, San Antonio has decreased per-person water use by 20%.[31]
Cape Town, South Africa, also had to reduce water consumption after nearly running dry in 2018. Three years later, “I definitely think that there has been a permanent behavior shift,” said Limberg, a local appointed official and a mayoral committee member for waste and water in Cape Town . “There’s definitely been a greater awareness to conserve water, and of how incredibly finite this resource is, and how vulnerable we are if we face a shortage of water.”[32]
Enhanced water meters also help. WaterOn, a device produced by India-based Smarter Homes, is a metering and leakage prevention system. In 2019 it saved 40,000 apartment households an average of 35 percent of their water consumption. In one region it saves millions of gallons of water each month.[33]
Low-tech Tools Can Also Be Economical Solutions
Then there are more basic solutions that help numerous people, like drilling wells in areas that lack access to fresh water. This video below shares the story of one village in Nepal that benefitted from this approach provided by their local church.
Nepal: Getting fresh water was a constant time-consuming challenge for this entire village until the local church installed a Jesus Well which resolved the water shortage and benefitted their entire community.
This Jesus Well in Assam has become very useful to the villagers who did not have clean drinking water, especially during rainy season. They now use the water for drinking, cooking, washing clothes, bathing, and even water their cattle with it.
For just over two decades, Gospel for Asia (GFA World) has helped drill Jesus Wells in Asia. These wells provide clean water at a cost of less than five dollars per person.[34] GFA also distributes BioSand water filters, devices that use concrete, different types of sand and gravel to remove impurities, providing water for drinking and cooking that is 98 percent pure.[35]
The value such low-tech solutions provide is evident in the numbers: it costs about $1,400 to drill a Jesus Well, which may provide clean water for up to 300 people per day for 10 to 20 years. While a BioSand water filter only supplies water to one family at a cost of $30 per unit, it offers a readily available clean drinking source for a similar five-dollar figure.
Over the years, more than 38 million people in Asia have received safe drinking water through GFA World’s clean water initiatives. In addition to providing water wells and filters, Gospel for Asia (GFA World) conducts free medical camps that offer treatment for such water-linked ailments as diarrhea—the most serious illness children face worldwide.
If this special report has touched your heart and you would like to help give clean water to a needy village in Asia, then make a generous one time or monthly gift toward Jesus Wells and Water Filters.
About GFA World
Gospel for Asia (GFA World) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In a typical year, this includes thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching to provide hope and encouragement in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit the Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
Read the rest of this GFA World Special Report: Fresh Water: An Increasingly Scarce Resource More Vital than Oil or Gold—Part 1
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, has been the model for numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to help the poor and deprived worldwide, reveals a troubling new report for World Water Day on March 22 — a growing shortage and scarcity of the planet’s most “precious” resource, water, could lead to “dire consequences” worldwide — including the Western U.S. — as hot, arid regions get thirstier.
WORLD ON BRINK OF ‘DIRE’ WATER SHORTAGE: Growing scarcity of the planet’s most “precious” resource could lead to “dire consequences” worldwide — including the Western U.S. — as hot, arid regions get thirstier, a troubling new report for World Water Day on March 22 reveals. The report, Water: An Increasingly Scarce Resource That Is Precious As Gold, from GFA World says global demand is expected to surge more than 50% in the next 20 years.
Surging global population, urban development and rising temperatures could leave billions worldwide struggling to find enough water to drink within the next two decades, according to the report Water: An Increasingly Scarce Resource That Is Precious As Gold.
“The consequences are dire,” says the report by global humanitarian agency GFA World. “Areas could become uninhabitable; tensions over how to share and manage water resources like rivers and lakes could worsen; more political violence could erupt.”
Water shortages contributed to both the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria and the civil war in Syria, the report says, noting: “Water scarcity is the ‘invisible’ hand behind many humanitarian crises.”
Citing a New York Times article, the report says 40 million people living in 7 states in the Western U.S. who rely on water from the Colorado River could face severe shortages in coming years.
‘Runaway’ Crisis
In the next 20 years, demand for water is expected to surge more than 50%. “Once we’re on that train, it’s not clear where it stops,” the report quotes Jennifer Pitt, director of the Colorado River program at the National Audubon Society, as saying.
The looming water crisis could also hugely impact agricultural output, including staple crops, meaning people could struggle to find food and beverages in the stores, according to London-based financial giant Barclays.
Humanitarian agencies such as Gospel for Asia (GFA World) are drilling thousands of deep-water wells, supplying reliable, clean drinking water for millions in remote places where children often suffer and die from waterborne parasites and diseases like diarrhea, typhoid and cholera.
“This desperate situation is especially acute in Asia, where millions of families get their drinking water from the only source available to them — often a dirty river or stagnant pond,” said Gospel for Asia (GFA World) founder K.P. Yohannan.
“Just as Jesus offered people ‘living water,’ we’re striving to do the same as an expression of God’s care for them,” Yohannan said.
About GFA World
Gospel for Asia (GFA World) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In a typical year, this includes thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching to provide hope and encouragement in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit the Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
Nirmala’s story is typical and illustrates the impact these simple devices can make. She lives in a small Asian village where the only water source is a small polluted pond.
That marks a stark contrast to other wells in the area that provided foul-tasting water and eventually broke down. Now, Saamel observes, people from three nearby villages come to use the Jesus Well for its clean, reliable water.
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