Q & A With Heather Coleman-Cox, Who’s Bringing Full-Service Water Stations to Rural Ghana

Water scarcity in rural Africa not only poses significant health risks, it increases gender inequality.

“The girls can’t go to school, because it’s their job to get the water and depending on how large the village is, this can be a daily trek,” Heather Coleman-Cox of the Ghana AquaVenture Emmanuel (G.A.V.E.) Foundation told The Skanner. “It can be three hours to a well, where you do the wash, get the water, then another three-hour walk back home with big buckets of water on your head which you don’t dare spill. It’s a very arduous process.”

After a recent trip to Ghana, Coleman-Cox created a framework to provide “water packages” to villages, starting with the place she visited on a 10-day tour in March 2023. For about $6,600 in American currency, Coleman-Cox’s newly formed foundation provides a borehole of up to 300 meters, or 984 feet, to create a well, then adds an electric pump, dual water storage tanks that hold 10,000 liters each, solar panels to power the pumps and a structurally sound concrete foundation to support it all.

UNICEF estimates that about 10% of Ghanaians must spend more than 30 minutes to access potable water. In a country of just over 30 million people, such errands mean disruption and difficulty in everyday life.

Coleman-Cox, who holds a masters of science degree in computer science and worked as a network engineer at Intel for 12 years, said community service is in her DNA: her uncle and her mother each won the Gladys McCoy award consecutive years.

Coleman-Cox spoke to The Skanner about why she set out to make life easier in rural Ghana. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ghana water project med (Photo/Sizeless Films)
The Skanner: How did the Ghana AquaVenture Emmanuel (G.A.V.E.) Foundation come to be?

Coleman-Cox: It’s always been my lifelong dream to visit Africa…in March of 2023 we took a 10-day trip to Ghana with this travel company and while we were there, we covered probably three-quarters of the country by bus.

We landed in Accra and from there we went up north. The further north we went the landscape changed: no more freeways, no more paved streets, no more skyscrapers, it was all dirt roads and trees and jungle. The touring company made arrangements with two villages to bring their tourists there to meet the chief and meet the villagers and understand what they do. So that’s what we did – the first village that we visited was Janikura, and we talked to the chief and asked him what his needs were. The first thing he said was water and a clinic. My travel group and I, at first we were just like, oh, let’s go get them some water! And our tour guide said no, they want a permanent solution for water, like a well.

So we decided that we wanted to help them get what’s called a borehole. It’s a well. While we were there, I made contact with people to find out who I should do a contract with to bring a borehole to this village. I got two bids, and the least expensive bid was about $1,700 U.S.

My borehole driller is a hydrogeologist, so he’ll go out and test the aquifer and make sure that the water, when they do dig for it, will be okay to use for drinking; that it doesn’t have too many mineral deposits that will require a water filtration system, because that would add more to the project price. We did have to turn one village down because of that issue.

I did a GoFundMe, and a lot of people from my group participated. We raised that money in less than five days, and I sent 80% out to the company and they constructed the borehole. It was fabulous. We had a little money left over, so we raised more money and constructed a second borehole in the other village that we visited. So while I was getting that done, the first village contacted me and said they really needed storage tanks to store the water – they were sharing the water with the neighboring villages. I got a quote for the water storage tank to bring two 10,000-liter water storage tanks, which actually cost more than the borehole. You have to have a structure to set the tank on, and that’s what’s very expensive – the concrete and the work of constructing the structure, because it has to be very sturdy to hold these big tanks. I raised not much money on that, 80% was my own money.

ghana water project med2 (Photo/Sizeless Films)
The Skanner: Why did you decide to fund water packages, rather than just drilling a well?

I have done those two villages, plus three more. One is in the works right now. I almost have five under my belt.

This work can go on for years. My tour guide even said, why don’t you not do the whole project and just (fit) in mechanical pumps? That way you could help more villages quicker. And I’m like, no, I want to have a really full solution with the solar panels – they can even use that for other electrical means. And also, the water storage tanks, they store up the water and neighboring villages will come and use it too. My water package, the one that God has put in my heart for me to do, is a full-service solution, and the water is free. It never runs out.

So it’s going to change (life for) generation after generation after generation. It’s life-changing.

The demand is much greater than the supply. With these last three projects, I’ve been solely funding them. I had just a drizzle of donations come in. I’m hoping the more exposure I get for the project, more people would be willing to donate. I haven’t had the response I wanted, but I just feel like God has a mission for me and he’s going to make sure that it gets done.

The Skanner: What is it like for people who live in these villages when they don’t have a well?

Coleman-Cox: The well is only full with water in their rain season, so most of the year, it’s not raining.

It just depends on the proximity of where the village is to the nearest well. It can be a three-hour walk. The girls and the women are responsible for fetching the water, so they’ll take the big bowls on their heads, they’ll take dirty clothes and they’ll go to the well…I’ve had the villagers show me what they have to do without the borehole in the village. They’ll walk for three hours with dirty clothes and big bowls, then they take these buckets down into the well, bring the water out and fill up their bowls and wash their clothes right there. It’s just a very arduous, hard way to live.

They need the water for cooking, cleaning, drinking, bathing. It’s really a blessing for them when the borehole and water project gets installed in their village. I try to work with villages that have schools and children, because it’s just so unfair for the children to have to live that way without water.

The Skanner: In places where you’ve installed these water packages, what difference do you see in day-to-day life?

Coleman-Cox: It’s just amazing. The fourth village that I did, I saw all these men and boys at the water project. I asked, where are the women? They said the women now, they’re cooking or cleaning or doing other things – they don’t have to take six hours out of their day to go fetch water.

One of the villages I work with creates shea butter and they distribute it worldwide. They can spend more time doing other things to bring money into the village. They can go to school now. It just uplifts their quality of life to take off that burden of water, which should be a human right. When they get it, their lives and daily tasks are completely changed. They can do more to contribute to the village.

(The project crew members) give me videos of work all along the way, from the spot where the borehole will be done, the drilling – they can go down 300 meters below the earth’s surface, and when the water first comes spouting out, it’s such an amazing sight. And then when I see the villagers, the children, using the water – these kids don’t get to play in water, and it is so hot there. But now, with the borehole being there, they can play in the water! To see that, it kind of brings me to tears. It’s just so rewarding, it’s more than money can buy.

Even though I’ve used thousands of dollars of my own money, it’s worth it. I’m going to estimate that I have helped about 20,000 to 25,000 people in just a year and a half.

For more information about the Ghana AquaVenture Emmanuel (G.A.V.E.) Foundation, and to donate, visit https://gavefoundation.org.