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GOT A BIRTHDAY, WEDDING, ANNIVERSARY, OR MILESTONE COMING UP?
Turn your celebration into a ripple of impact.
Ask friends and family to donate in your honor—and help women gain access to clean water, grow their own food, and build community-owned banks. We’ll help you set it up and share your story. Contact us to start your celebration fundraiser. Let’s turn your joy into her power.
WHY OUR MODEL WORKS
- Our women-led systems are community-built, maintained, and trusted.
- Our technologies are low-cost, locally sourced, and climate-resilient.
- Our solutions are holistic: water + sanitation + hygiene + training + income generation.
IMPACT STORY
SHE IS ISABELA OTUMO
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Isabella grew up in a small, dusty village in Karapul, Siaya County, where water was carried for miles on the heads of women and girls. Like many daughters in her community, she was pulled from school in third grade. Her parents believed a girl’s duty was not to learn but to fetch water, collect firewood, cook, and prepare for marriage. Hunger often followed her to bed, making focus impossible. To most, she was just another girl left behind.
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But life had other plans.
One day, a local group—Community Mobilization for Positive Empowerment (COMPE)—invited her to join a training on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). At first, Isabella laughed. What could a girl who never finished school possibly learn about construction? Yet the trainers welcomed her warmly, translating lessons into her language and encouraging her to try. Curiosity turned into courage, and courage into skill.
Isabella discovered she had a natural gift for working with her hands—measuring, molding, fixing. She learned to build rainwater tanks, toilets, and handwashing stations. Returning home, she put her training to use. With support from She Builds Power (then GWWI), she built her first rainwater tank at her church. When the rains came and the tank filled, her neighbors were astonished. Soon, she was building a second tank, then toilets, then handwashing stations. Word spread.
Her husband, once skeptical, admitted: “My wife has climbed roofs and built tanks—things only men were supposed to do. She has shown us all: it can be done.”
Her confidence grew. Encouraged by mentors, Isabella applied for a government tender to build water tanks for a primary school. Despite language barriers and sitting before educated men, she won. With her team, she built durable double-compost pit latrines that transformed the school. Teachers praised her work, parents marveled, and children pointed in admiration: “That’s Isabella, the woman who builds.”
From that first contract came many more—tanks, toilets, and handwashing stations in homes and schools. A girl once dismissed as unworthy of education was now a builder, a leader, and a role model.
Today, Isabella works with MKOPA Solar, trains others in WASH construction, and mentors women and youth. Her journey is a living testament to resilience, breaking barriers, and proving that with opportunity and determination, even the margins can become the center.
Her story, like water itself, is unstoppable.