Water | groundworkgroup

Water access project

Water is life.

We choose the location for our wells through community and technical consultation. Working with our locally-employed construction team, we repair old wells where possible, and construct new ones where necessary.

The following are photos taken pre-construction, or immediately following installation as well as 3-6 months afterwards.

Before and After Quarie Bar and Brasserie GWG Well

Before and After Earnshaw Family Well

Our water access project is located in a small village outside Siem Reap. We chose to concentrate one small community of wells among these families as they rated highly in needs assessments,

In addition to HIV+ members and amputee victims of landmines, these families were victims of poverty tourism.

These families currently live yards away from a corrupt poverty tourism operation. Our water project supports them in their new life away from their previous exploitation.

These families were previously held in small rooms and paid a few cents a day. They had to remain in their tiny cage-style rooms in order to be present when the busloads of tourists arrived, to take photos of these families living in manufactured poverty.

The families see none of this money.

Common practice in poverty tourism scams; make the people look as destitute as possible and request donations from unknowing, well intentioned tourists, made to believe that their $20 or $50 will go far in improving the quality of life for these sad looking families.

The families see none of this money.

In fact, if any member of the family attempted to leave the 'community' and work for a days pay, they forfeited their daily stipend of several cents and risked losing what little that was provided , like the roof over their heads.

Donating a well.

You will notice each well in our community project is dedicated to the donor business or family that funded the repair/construction.

The cost of a new well including construction, maintenance and repair; $175-200 USD.

The cost of repairing a well, including construction, maintenance and future repair; $75-150 USD.

Each well bears a plaque in honour of the donor and very importantly, the mobile number of our lead construction manager in case of repairs.

In our community water access project, we have elected one community member who often visits town for work, to be in charge of calling in the repairs as required. We give him a $2 USD monthly allowance in order to ensure he has the phone credit required to place the call.

Should we return to find a well in need of repair and we have not received a service request, the community as a whole is culpable and is put on notice or given a warning. Should this reoccur within three months, the well in question may be removed.

Ownership is key in the maintenance and sustainability of our water project. If the community doesn't care for their equipment, they undermine their own capacity to reap the benefits and they rob another family of the opportunity to profit from the chance of having a well.

And profit they can...

The Earnshaw family well has been by far our most successful story so far. The family to whom this well belongs has made the most of it.

To be frank, they have blown all of our field staff away.

When we met the mother she was frail, exhausted and adamant we provide her with a well. Not the greatest fans of being pushed and yelled at in Khmer -her persistence did in the end pay off and our field team followed her to her land. She dragged us up the hill to her uneven, dry plot tucked away from the other families.

She heaved and forced herself over a blue plastic pvc pipe dug into the ground; a broken well obviously serving no purpose but to exhaust and frustrate her.

Truth be told, she needed access to water and there were no two ways about it. So we approved a well for her site, and we politely made our way back down the slope after a semi-translated conversation

about her husband’s deteriorating health and daughter's inability to attend school.

A handful of months later, Jimmy reports back after a field visit, "you won't believe this, she's made an enormous garden and is so successful

and is so successful, that she is selling her fruits at the market and bartering them for fish and meat. I think she's laying the foundation for a house". Another handful of months later, less than one year since she dragged us up that dusty trail, her property boasts a tiered agricultural operation complete with irrigation fashioned off the well. She has indeed laid the foundation for what is now a complete, new second story raised home. Her husbands' health has improved and her daughter no longer sells crafts in the streets but attends school.

Less than one year and $175 USD later, her life and those of her family are forever changed.