Water, Health & Women's Empowerment- Guinea Bissau

With a new year and new decade upon us, many of us have been looking back at what we achieved in 2019, and what we wish to achieve in 2020. WellFound is no different; we have goals, we have targets and we also look back at what we have done in the past to inform on how we can move forward to meet our goals. 

Numbers and raw data are a small part of the bigger picture and no project can rely solely on the numbers, but they do give us a good insight into the areas where we have excelled and the areas were more work is needed. Any project must collect data from the field to see if we are on track to meeting our goals, and in 2019 we are happy to announce that the numbers are looking very good indeed. 

We collect lots of different figures and measurements form our projects, far too many to report here but here are just some of our successes since April 2019:

In the last nine months, WellFound has brought safe and clean drinking water to almost 6000 people; over 7000 people now have access to a private, well maintained and clean family toilet, and over 700 people, mainly women, have become economically active for the first time, brining money into their families and their communities on a regular basis. While economic empowerment is vital, social and gender equality is paramount. Since April last year, we have seen over 1300 women report and actively demonstrate more confidence to participate in decision making at the community level and over 1000 men reporting and demonstrating more supportive attitudes and behaviour towards women's role in decision making as a result of WellFound training. 

All of this is a huge achievement. While it is only a small part of the picture, it is very real, very encouraging and gives us even more hope that small organisations like WellFound can tackle some of our world's most pervasive and long-standing barriers to development. By being small and partnering directly with the communities with whom we work, we are able to fight these issues from the bottom up, creating truly sustainable and last change. 

All of the above could not have been done without our kind supporters and donors. We would like to thank everyone who joined us in 2019 and everyone who continues to be by our side in 2020. Whether you donate or not, even telling one person about WellFound-whether that be a friend, a colleague, or a family member-can make a world difference.

As individuals, issues such as scarcity of water, gender inequality and child mortality seem like impossible problems to overcome, but if we continue to work together and stay focused, these problems will diminish until they disappear.