We Give Water

05/07/2023

Last weekend we were excited to do a presentation about our work in The Gambia to the Pawling Ave Umc This church has been very supportive of our mission and we are so grateful for their help! They even gave us a donation during the service. Thank you to everyone in the congregation for helping bring clean water to those in need!!

03/24/2023

We want to give a HUGE thank you to Horses on the Beach and Long Tonic for hosting a benefit concert to support We Give Water this weekend! If you can't make it to see the incredible music feel free to donate to support We Give Water and our mission to bring clean, accessible water to The Gambia!

06/16/2022

Check out the plug for We Give Water in the below article ❤️

https://www.upworthy.com/first-students-are-changing-the-world-through-stem-one-challenge-at-a-time?fbclid=IwAR3Iwyv_O0ningyCMWnoHoQXKTkqSCFHOJwm7-aZl7_Ff_yh9xewjfqYTp8

You may have seen them in Disney+'s amazing "More Than Robots" documentary.

04/27/2022

We wanted to thank all the wonderful eWATER services staff in The Gambia that helped make this trip happen. Thank you Alieu, Sibo, Jess and Jainaba for driving us (and listening to complaints about driving in the heat without air conditioning), for keeping us hydrated and fed with some pretty amazing African food, for showing us how the totally awesome eWATER system works, for showing us around your country, for making us laugh and most of all welcoming us into your family. We so admire your commitment and dedication fasting all day in the tremendous heat for Ramadan. It’s impossible to thank you enough Rob Hygate for everything you did for us this past week!!We enjoyed your lively conversations and appreciated your guidance throughout the trip. Thank you for staying up late to cart us to and from the airport and for being flexible with our changing plans. Thank you for giving us “perspective!” Here’s a few more random, fun pics from the week. Thank you to all of our Facebook friends and family for following us on this journey, we are grateful to all of you who have supported us over the years!! ❤️

04/27/2022

After getting back to JFK, we stopped to get dinner with the amazing Lisa Siegmann. (aka aunt of us Robertsons!). For those of you who don’t know, We Give Water was started from a FIRST Lego League project based on global water problems. (Check out FIRST programs at www.firstinspires.org) She is the reason that we started the journey of doing FIRST! Without her We Give Water never would have happened. We are so glad we could see her and tell her all about our adventures and thank her for everything she’s done for us!

04/26/2022

Our last day in The Gambia! We spent a little time in the EWater Services office learning how they scope a village to determine where and how many taps are needed for a village before a system goes in. We were craving chocolate (no desserts here 😭) so Rob rounded up some kinder eggs for us to satisfy our sweet tooth! One of the things Gavin really wanted was to get a musical instrument from Africa, so today he did a little shopping and purchased an authentic drum. Our new friends Sibo and Jainaba gifted us with some colorful African outfits. For dinner tonight we got to take a “gilly gilly” to the restaurant. It’s just a little van that drives folks around for a nominal fee, but these gilly gillys are really something to see-up country these vans were overflowing with people and piled high with stuff and animals on the roof. In the one pic below that was taken from our rear view window, there’s a gilly gilly with two goats on top! We are sitting at the Banjul airport now waiting for our flight reminiscing about our week…

04/24/2022

A quiet day here for us in The Gambia…a church service for some, sleeping in for others, lots of swimming, reading and sitting by the pool. We capped off the day with a long beach walk that ended with a sky full of stars.

04/23/2022

Today was our final day “up country”and like the rest of the week it was very memorable! Since We Give Water started 4 years ago we have helped fund water systems and/or taps in four different locations. All week long we have been visiting these locations in person and today was our last stop before driving back towards Banjul. On the way home one of our cars ran out of gas! Fortunately a local helped us out and we were back on the road fairly quickly. We were all very grateful to swim and shower at the Mango Lodge after all our travels!!! After a little downtime, our amazing host, Rob Hygate, treated us to a beach party! We dipped our feet in the water, had dinner, watched the sunset, sat by the fire, played a little music, sang and danced…the African musicians were awesome!

04/22/2022

Today we checked some more taps, cleaned some solar panels and collected payments. We met with elders at two villages who do not have access to clean water and Gavin had a chance to ask them questions about how the lack of access to clean water affects their villages. Both villages want clean,accessible water for their people and they want it yesterday. The first village told us they only have enough water in their tank for one hour in the morning. Only one hour. Then they have to get water from the open well. One elder told us how his relative fell into the well because there was a fight over the water. They talked about how their children are often sick from drinking the water. The other village said they share an open well with the village across the road and that they have to strain their water before drinking it in order to get the worms out. Think about that next time you go to your sink for water and count your blessings that it’s clean and you can get it whenever you want. If you feel moved to help these villages who so desperately want a reliable, clean water system, please consider donating via Venmo to . Share this post with your contacts and ask them to consider making a donation to help us out. It was 120 degrees today and we didn’t even care about eating. All we wanted was water to drink…

04/21/2022

A fun day today meeting the principal and some students at the Wellingaraba school where we recently helped fund their water system with EWater Services. (Thanks everyone who golfed with us at our tournament last summer-it’s because of YOU that they have water!). The school was on vacation this week but some students came out to meet us anyway. They showed us their garden-they haven’t had a garden in 3 years because they haven’t had enough water. Now 4 students care for each patch and the vegetables help fund other projects for the school. Rob Hygate taught the kids a mini lesson about how the water system works and Elizabeth and Gavin taught the students how to sing the chorus of John Denver’s Country Road 😊. Will and Gavin helped check and repair some taps and we visited the village of Demati where we installed a water system a few years ago. It was 119 degrees today….

04/20/2022

Today was a lot of driving as we drove from Banjul “up country” to Wellingaraba, the village we’ve funded taps for. It was a steamy 115 degrees here at the hottest and now at 8pm it’s still 99! We hit up market day and we heard from some folks how much they value and appreciate the clean water in their village. Will and Gavin helped fix some taps in need of maintenance and we’ve been making lots of friends with the locals.

04/20/2022

Flying into The Gambia last night was so different compared to leaving JFK. There were so many bright lights in NYC but only infrequent, small clumps of dim lights in Africa. We met Rob Hygate at the airport and after 30+ hours of traveling were so happy to get a good nights sleep at the lovely Mango Lodge! We met the eWATER team in the morning and then had a meeting with the political and economic officer of the US Embassy in Banjul in the afternoon. This evening we enjoyed a traditional Gambian dinner at the home of some of the eWATER staff.