Clean Water for Everyone (CWFE) founder and CEO Wemimo Abbey, 22, was recently spotlighted on Face2Face Africa, when we awarded him our Young Africans Committed to Excellence (YACE) Award in July. Now Abbey has returned in order gain support for his current project in Zimbabwe.
RELATED: Introducing Africa’s Best: Meet the 2014 Young Africans Committed to Excellence (YACE)
Abbey created Clean Water for Everyone as a way to provide an answer to an issue he — and many African youth — face.
“I started CWFE because…I could relate to the tragedies that afflict families and schools due to a lack of water and proper sanitation. I remember my middle school boarding house toilet [being] plagued with maggots, [so] I started CWFE.”
And since his beginnings in 2011, Nigerian-born Abbey has been able to bring clean water to more than 46,000 people, build and/or renovate 12 toilet facilities, and sponsor 51 scholarships.
See photos of CWFE providing clean water to both students and communities here:
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Now, Abbey is currently raising money for an all-girls school in Zimbabwe called “Empandeni Mission School.”
With just 10 days to go, CWFE needs $3,895 in order to make their goal of $6,000, and a donor has agreed to match the monies raised up to $5,000.
In addition to always appreciating any donations the public can make, Abbey says CWFE is always looking for energized volunteers to help with their initiatives, “[We are interested in] publicity, promotions, and collaboration. We are also always looking for volunteers: web designers, bloggers, expert grant writers, and brand ambassadors.”
But even with all of his success. There is one nagging issue that Abbey has consistently found.
Unfortunately, since CWFE’s inception, fellow Africans haven’t been as proactive and involved in facilitating bringing much-needed water solutions to our very own communities.
“I can’t really wrap my mind around why we, Africans, don’t support our initiatives. I also think there’s a lack of trust. It’s frustrating when more than 95 percent of our donors are non-Africans and a brunt of our project is situated in Africa.
“It’s, however, our job to understand the root causes of this troubling fact and find ways to rally our African brothers and sisters to contribute [so that we can] change [our own] landscape.”
After Zimbabwe, Abbey is looking ahead to bringing clean water to Mali, Nigeria, and Ghana.
And CWFE is willing to go to any country that requests his services. To bring clean water to an area costs roughly $10,000, “We usually implement our project in schools and run water stations outside the school for public use. This strategy ensures or system is properly maintained,” Abbey adds.
Learn how to bring clean water to your neck of the woods here.
And donate money to the schoolgirls of Zimbabwe here.
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