Spreading Love at Rapha Community Center.

The first quarter of 2017 has been a busy one for Eleos Project. In February we traveled to Kenya to drill a new borehole at the Rapha Community Center. The name Rapha comes from the Bible, Jehovah-Rapha “the Lord who heals you."

 Rapha is located in the central highlands of Kenya, about 3.5 hours from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Rapha serves two purposes: one is a children’s home, and the other, is a secondary school, or high school.  At Rapha Children’s Home they care for 70 children, boys and girls. Most of the children have been orphaned due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In many cases, they were living with grandparents who could not afford to care for them. They missed school, and some were even caring for younger siblings.  In addition, Rapha provides a safe haven to children who were physically, mentally and/or sexually abused in their previous home situation. Every child has a unique story, but they all need a new home and safe place to be a child.  Rapha truly provides a place where children can be loved and healed!

We first visited Rapha in 2014 and came away from that visit knowing we had to do something to help the children at the center with their water situation. The water they were using came from an open, dirty source. This water is not safe for drinking and many of the children had chronic illnesses due to drinking the unsafe water. While we were drilling at Rapha, we noticed two donkeys pulling a crude wooden cart loaded with many Jerry cans filled with water. Every morning, water was collected from a small pond and brought back to Rapha. The pond is several kilometers away and this burden takes most of the morning to complete. Every child at the home receives one Jerry can (about five gallons) of water a day (imagine how different life would be if you only had 5 gallons of water a day?). In order to provide every child with water they have to collect 70 Jerry cans of water a day. Needless to say, there was never enough water, which led to poor sanitation and health.

The new borehole at Rapha produces 2,250 liters of water an hour. Once the solar pump is installed the available water for the children's home and school will be a little over 10,000 liters a day. This will be more than enough water for all the children at the center and insures plenty of clean, fresh water for the future!

We would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for standing with us in providing the gift of clean water in this drought-stricken area of Africa!