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London Water Run
Project Roles:
Michael Konstantinou &
Constantinos Papatryphonos
Marathon Runners
Daphnie Costi
Cheerleader / Fundraiser Coordinator
Rhea Foundation
Water Drilling & Project Coordinator
Fundraiser goal:
€20,000 EUR (£18,000 GBP)
Campaign Story:
Michael and Constantinos are running their first half marathon (21km) in London, on the 18th of December in Richmond Park, and have teamed up with Rhea Foundation in an effort to raise awareness of Tanzania’s water problem. They are raising funds that are going to be invested towards drilling a sustainable water well for a rural community in Tanzania that will provide daily stable access to clean drinking water. The total cost of the drilling project is estimated at a sum of around 20,000 EUR /18,000 GBP. (Please read the project specifics below for more details)
Michael and Constantinos have been training hard for the last 3 months to prepare for the upcoming run, parallel to their busy work/life schedules, motivated by the fact that they will help people that need a source of clean drinking water.
We call upon our friends, family and community to help us realise a project for a great cause.
Any support you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Every single donation that you give through this initiative goes directly to the people that need it, so we are truly making a real and remarkable difference in the lives of Tanzanian families in need.
London Water Run 18/12/2022:
Visiting Tanzania was a beautiful, grounding, transformative experience for Michael and Daphnie. One cannot help but fall in love with the country’s biodiversity and natural beauty but most of all with the local culture and its wonderful people. Tanzanians are warm, welcoming, attentive and hard working. The nomadic tribes don’t seem to have much, living free in the wild, but they seem happy and content. They work closely together as a community to survive. Children as little as two years old are pulling their weight in the family chores. Despite their daily challenges, their carefree and positive attitude was admirable and inspiring.
For this fundraising endeavour, Michael and Constantinos are taking on the challenge of running a half marathon in London, even though they were not long-distance runners (and specifically Michael was not a runner at all, he had to start his training from zero). Constantinos is currently living in Cyprus and will be travelling to London specifically for this marathon run. Daphnie is managing this fundraising endeavour and has initiated and coordinated the collaboration with Rhea Foundation that will actually take on the project of building the water well in Tanzania.
The Tanzanian water crisis
Despite Tanzania’s natural beauty the local people are struggling daily with the lack of clean drinking water and access to proper sanitation. Water resources in the country are scarce and there is no infrastructure that can sustain everyone’s daily drinking needs. People living in rural areas and local tribes are the ones mostly affected. Low funding by the governmental water sector and key State institutions has slowed the development and implementation of clean drinking sources for everyone in rural areas widening the gap between people living in industrialized cities and the ones living in villages.
Access to clean drinking water and proper sanitation is a basic human right. However, over 24 million local people are impacted by Tanzania’s water crisis, almost half of the population of the country and over 43 million do not have access to proper sanitation.
Moreover, of the people affected, women and children carrying water are likely gathering it from unsafe sources like rivers, canals, ponds, and unprotected structures like hand-dug wells and natural springs.
Approximately 26,500 Tanzanians, including 18,500 children under the age of 5, die each year from diseases directly attributed to contaminated water. That’s approximately 51 children every day.
Moreover, Tanzania is currently experiencing the worst drought to date. Four failing rainy seasons since late 2020 have caused the worst drought in at least 40 years, killing millions of livestock, destroying crops and plunging parts of the country into near-starvation conditions.
The Mto wa Mbu Drilling Project:
Rhea Foundation is piloting water drilling initiatives in rural Tanzania with the aim of impacting the quality of life of communities currently living in drought. The water projects they complete are gifted to the local communities they assist. Rhea Foundation just completed the drilling of a water project for a community in rural Tanzania near the Makuyuni area that had been living in drought for more than 50 years. The Foundation drilled at a depth of 220 meters and found a sustainable water source that would be able to provide the community with 30,000 Litres of clean drinking water per day.
Michael and Constantinos are running the marathon in order to gather the funds needed to initiate a similar water project for a nearby community that is unable to reach the water source that was just discovered in Makuyuni. The drilling site chosen is next to a small village school in the Mto wa Mbu area, 36km away from Makuyuni. Their fundraiser aims to kick-start the gathering of the funds required to provide the community in Mto wa Mbu with their own clean water source and help them escape the vicious cycle of poverty.
The project will be initiated with Rhea Foundation conducting a hydrogeological study using Magnetic Resonance Sounding methods (MRS) in order to detect the presence of a viable water source under the earth’s surface. Once a viable source is pinpointed the drilling team will be mobilized to initiate the drilling phase of the project. It is roughly estimated that a sustainable water source can be accessed in that particular area at a drilling depth of 130-150 meters. Once the source is accessed we will proceed with the installation of high-quality PVC casings and a motorized pumping system to bring the water up to the community and store it in high capacity water tanks. The total cost of the drilling project is estimated at a sum of around €20,000 EUR (£18,000 GBP).