Community Highlights: Meet Georgia Evans of Village Care Project

My lifelong dream as a photographer was to go on a wildlife photo safari in Africa. So, in 2016 I joined a small group of photographers to go to Tanzania, Africa. One day of the trip was to visit an indigenous Massai village and I decided to take them two community-size clean water filters plus 50 individual clean water straws.

The response I received from the chief and the villagers was overwhelming. They were so happy and grateful to receive these gifts that would help them stay healthy from waterborne bacteria and pathogens. I realized how important this small gesture was.

For weeks and months afterward, I found myself wondering how could one person possibly make a difference in a world that has so much need. I told myself to just go back, start small and see where it goes. It is better to do something than nothing. So, my motto became “making a difference, one village at a time”.

My friends and family pretty much thought I was crazy. You are going back to Africa alone? They said “You are a senior 60-year-old white woman! Are you out of your mind, aren’t you afraid?” Nevertheless, I hired a local African “team plus a translator” and returned. I will never forget one of the first of 4 villages on that trip was a remote Massai village that took hours over a bumpy road to get to.

We took water filters and mosquito nets, and the chief asked my translator, “How did this white woman from America know that we needed these things? We have never received any help, not even from the government”. It was a small gift, but for these villagers it made a huge difference.

After this journey, I received so much support that I turned the little personal project into an international non-profit called Village Care Project. We have a board of directors and have also taken volunteers on one of the trips before the covid hit.

Since 2016 we have visited 17 more remote villages and distributed community-size water filters, family-size bucket clean water filters, 1000 mosquito nets that help prevent malaria, and large tarps to help villagers waterproof their leaky thatch huts during the monsoon rains. Our next trip is being planned for Jan 2023!

The biggest challenge has been getting funding to continue the project. We had several very large fundraisers by large groups of people. However, after the pandemic raising funds has become more difficult. We also had to cut the Volunteer Program due to covid. Hoping to reinstate that for future trips.

We are a public, international, non-profit and our entire staff is volunteer, so any funds that are donated to us go directly into the project of helping buy, deliver, educate and demonstrate how to use these lifesaving tools to help villagers stay healthy and productive lives. All donations are also tax deductible.

We serve indigenous African villagers who live in remote areas. Many are nomadic or semi-nomadic people who move locations as their resources dwindle. So, we make sure our lifesaving gifts are small and portable.

WATER FILTERS These people we visit gather surface water in buckets from anywhere they can find it and share these water sources with domestic and wild animals. Due to these poor water sources, the village people have chronic cases of dysentery, cholera, E. coli, and other waterborne illnesses.

The water filters last up to 5 years with maintenance and remove almost all of the bacteria and pathogens that make these people sick. On recent trips, we have revisited many villages to see if they needed help and replacement parts.

TREATED MOSQUITO BED NETS are one of the simplest yet most affordable ways for these villagers to stay healthy from malaria caused by mosquitos. Malaria is especially deadly for children and the mortality rate is one in 5 children.

TARPS are the latest and most popular tools that we distribute to help villagers stay warm and dry during the monsoon rains in their mud and thatch homes. Children and elders are especially vulnerable to living in cold, wet, muddy conditions.

Hope to visit many more villages in Tanzania, Africa. Including revisiting villages for support. If we can get the funding, I want to start building and drilling water wells in the areas that we have visited. Would love to expand to other developing countries as clean water is a huge issue worldwide.