Lifetime Wells International

Water is our most basic need. We can’t live without it. Yet many are forced to rely on contaminated water to survive, risking illness and even death every time they take a drink. The World Health Organization estimates that there are still 785 million people that do not have access to clean water.

Centreville Rotarian Ken Wood, an Eastern Shore well driller, uses his decades of experience to help address this need in Africa by traveling to Ghana and Tanzania an average of four times per year to bring clean water to hundreds of communities. Ken’s story began in 2006 with the sale of a used drilling rig to a Pennsylvania church that had a passion for helping the people of Ghana in need of clean water. One can’t just pick up a book to learn how to use a drilling rig, or how to find water, so the church convinced Ken to travel to Ghana to teach their team how to drill. Seeing the need and realizing that this mission would need his experience. Ken responded by accompanying the rig to Ghana where he found a new mission for his life.

After years of collaboration, Ken and his organization Lifetime Wells for Ghana partnered with another dedicated well driller, David Powell of Wells for Relief, to form a new non-profit organization Lifetime Wells International. In the last nine years, they have provided more than 3,000 water wells in Ghana and Tanzania.

The Centreville Rotary Club has supported Lifetime Wells International with annual grants for several years and is also working diligently on a Rotary International Global grant that will further support Ken’s mission by providing wells in more than twenty additional Ghana communities lacking access to clean water.

Members of the public interested in contributing to the effort of providing clean water in Ghana and Tanzania can do so by visiting lifetimewellsinternational.org.