Our Story
Eleven People, One Spreadsheet, No Overhead.
In 2009, our founder Nadia Rahim went to visit her grandmother's village in Tharparkar and found the nearest safe water four hours' walk away. She came home, emailed eleven friends, and raised enough for one borehole.
What made it work wasn't the money. It was the spreadsheet she sent back afterwards — every cost line, every receipt, the driller's name, the depth in metres, the date water came up. Nobody had ever shown those donors what their money did before.
That spreadsheet is still the whole organisation. It's bigger now, and it lives on a server instead of in an inbox, but the principle hasn't moved: if we can't show you the receipt, we don't spend the money.
Why We Exit
Charity Isn't Enough. Access Is.
Seventeen Years
Since
What we hold to
Four Things We Won’t Trade Away.
The People
Fourteen Staff. Nine Of Them In The Field.
We keep the head office small on purpose. Most of the team lives in the districts where the work happens, because decisions made from six thousand miles away tend to be wrong.
Twelve Countries No Flag Planted.
We only enter a district when a local partner asks us to and other agency is already there. We’ve turned down expansion into four countries for exactly that reason.
2009
Rwanda
2012
2014
2017
2023
2025
Funded And Supported By
