Ava's Well

Tank #2 at Gitaro Primary School

Sixteen at the time, I was ready to get home after a long, hot January day of sitting through my parents’ meetings in Kenya. Thinking we were on our way home, our van made an unanticipated stop in the schoolyard of a particularly dusty school.

I quickly forgot my desire to get home as I took a look at a school with the worst conditions I had seen yet. Welcoming us, the teachers invited us to interact with their classes. As my grandpa, Richard Scheuermann, was engaging a middle school-aged class, I saw a student suddenly fall over. I didn’t know what to make of it until the teachers informed us that she had passed out, likely due to lack of food and/or water. But what was most surprising was that no one seemed phased by it. Apparently, students passing out during class was a pretty regular experience.

A snapshot of Gitaro Primary School in 2013.

After this encounter, the head teacher took us into his office and told us more about the school’s desperate need for water. Being our first trip to Kenya, we had no plans other than to commission our first tank and get to know JJ’s community; so, having no foresight of the dozens of wells to come, we made no promises. However, seeing their great need, we prayed with the head teacher and asked him to encourage the teachers and 300 students to begin praying for water.

As we prayed with the teacher, little did we know that God was already on the move across the world - in the heart of a little, preschool-aged girl from El Paso, Illinois. While choosing which Christmas gifts to give from a World Vision catalog (her family usually donated funds for some chickens or a goat), Ava couldn’t understand why some kids didn’t already have clean water (WV was collecting donations for wells in Africa). She immediately said she wanted to get all the kids wells for Christmas. When her parents explained to her that they didn’t have the money to buy wells for all the kids in Africa, Ava decided that she and her 4-year-old twin sister would make the money themselves.  Knowing the twins didn’t quite grasp the amount it took to fund a well but still wanting to encourage them, Ava and Elise’s parents helped get them started in a new business venture: making bookmarks and selling them for a dollar.

Elise (left) with twin Ava (right) displaying some of their bookmarks.

Meanwhile, as the twins were beginning their bookmark business, the CDK team headed back from Kenya to El Paso. My mom soon connected with Ava and Elise’s mother Jackie and heard about their heart for kids without water. Remembering the meeting with Gitaro school, plans began to surface for the next well in Kenya.

Soon, more and more local kids were following Ava and Elise’s lead and creating their own bookmarks to sell for a dollar. This small, kid-sparked movement was featured in the local newspaper and began to draw more and more attention.

About a year later, on January 4, 2014, the work was done. The funds were raised, the water tank was constructed and Ava & Elise (along with their parents and a CDK team) were able to join the students in Gitaro school for the commissioning! If you have the same desire as Ava and Elise - to see kids in Kenya get access to clean water, you can get started by clicking on the Donation button below.