From their final grant report
Note: We’re sharing this story today because the grant recipient really understands the beauty of UTO. Even though we will likely never meet in person, our thank offerings are impacting an entire community, and for that, we all give thanks together.
Did this project change how you see gratitude?
Yes. It pushed us to treat gratitude as something you act on, not something you say. UTO trusted the diocese with resources for one of the most basic needs our communities had, and that trust came with an obligation to manage things honestly and finish what we started.
Water remains a basic need. This project sought to move the community from merely accessing water to enabling access to clean and safe water for a healthy living. This was an exciting intervention in the communities the project serves in Mumias and Ucheka. Children are excited about having water at their schools, and many adults can access clean and safe water without walking long distances, which saves them time and makes them more productive. All these people continue to express gratitude in many ways. Unique to it is gratitude expressed through love and passion. Many of the community members have become open to the institutions of the church as a result of the project, more receptive to people of different faiths or denominations. Children have gotten a new hope which they continue to express through new commitment to education, among others. We therefore learn that gratitude can be expressed through lifestyle; it can be seen or observed rather than just being heard.
It also changed how we think about the Anglican Communion. People we will likely never meet, in places far from Mumias, chose to invest in our communities anyway. That will keep paying off for years: in health, in schooling, in ministry that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Gratitude now comes with an obligation attached: Look after this infrastructure properly, keep serving our neighbours, and pass the same generosity on when the chance comes.
Tell us how the project went.
The Water for the Thirsty Project was carried out by the Anglican Church of Kenya, Diocese of Mumias, to fix a problem that had gone on for years: no reliable clean water at the diocesan headquarters or in the Ucheka Mission Area of Kakamega County. Before the project, the headquarters relied on a shallow well that dried up every dry season. Ucheka’s mission school, church, and neighbouring households depended on distant sources that weren’t always there when needed.
With support from the United Thank Offering, the diocese drilled two boreholes: one at the diocesan headquarters and another at Ucheka Mission Area. Each got a solar-powered submersible pump, a 10,000-litre tank on a nine-metre steel tower, full piping, and community access points. Every activity in the approved plan was completed, within budget, and both systems are running today.
The headquarters borehole now serves more than 2,500 people: diocesan staff, cathedral worshippers, students in the mission school, guests, and neighbouring households, among others. The Ucheka borehole serves Ucheka Church, Ucheka Mission School and the surrounding households which can now access clean and safe water without walking long distances, saving time for other productive duties. Learners can now attend classes and seamlessly be taught.
