Giving the Gift of Clean Water

Imagine waking up before work one morning to brush your teeth, only to discover there is no water in your bathroom faucet. Or spending hours of your day transporting water from another city so your family can have access to potable drinking water. It wouldn’t take long for these absences to affect your job, your health, and your ability to pursue new opportunities.

For millions of people in the global community, these scenarios are an everyday reality. I had the opportunity to witness the water crisis firsthand in Nicaragua through Associa’s partnership with the Weathermatic Save Water | Give Life Program.

For visitors, Nicaragua’s water crisis may not be readily apparent. The country is home to some of the largest freshwater lakes in Central America and the countryside has many fruit orchards and fields. However, clean water access is more difficult. When we toured Ventinueve deMayo with the village’s water committee, the members explained that many of the wells we saw were only full due to recent rainfall. They pointed out a small creek where residents draw water when the wells run dry. The community’s water supply was also open to surface water contamination because of the shallowness of the wells and because they had to be open for villagers to draw water. More sophisticated water sources, like wells with submersible pumps, were only available at a cost and were prohibitively expensive for the community to purchase and transport the water.

When our team arrived with drilling equipment, the village was ready for us. The town’s local water committee and the Living Water outreach coordinators worked for weeks to prepare the resources needed to build the well and to engage the community on how to care for the new well. A local landowner donated the land where the well was built, villagers cleared brush from the area and set the concrete for the well base. The whole community mobilized to improve the quality of life for all its residents, and I'm so grateful I got to see it firsthand.

With a Weathermatic smart irrigation system, you don’t need to travel abroad to help a community in need. Each year, Weathermatic donates a portion of their revenue to the Save Water | Give Life Program to fund global clean water initiatives in developing countries. To this date, their efforts have funded the construction of 41 wells in villages around the world. When your board decides to install a Weathermatic smart control system to improve your landscaping operations, you give another community access to safe drinking water.

Learn more at Weathermatic.com.