“For it is in giving that we receive.”
- St. Francis of Assisi
She turns worry into water.
When Karen Flewelling of Saratoga saw the lengths people in Third World countries go to in order to get clean water – their supplies often dripping with poisons and filth – she became willing to go to great lengths to help out.
She flies to jungles, deserts and bush lands to get wells drilled.
It wasn’t how she planned on living in retirement as a former physical education teacher and member of the North Colonie Teachers Association. But once she had seen the costs exacted from dirty water– death, dysentery, giardia,cholera – she could not turn away. Without water, the body dehydrates. Without water, crops and livestock cannot be raised. Once she had seen how girls have to leave school in order to work full-time hauling water for their families, she could not be idle. Her thirst for action took a wide turn.
“Water is it,” she said.
You can’t get much more basic than water.
Without it, we cannot live. Even thinking for too long about not having it can make the tongue feel parched. Now add in continuous, blazing heat. And water is a long hike away, a walk of miles, a return with heavy jugs and buckets that strain the head, arms and shoulders.
Flewelling put her coach’s hat back on and started her own team, Drilling For Hope (www.drillingforhope.org). The Community Foundation of the Capital Region manages her fund; the foundation is a 501 (c) (3) organization that helps philanthropists meet their fundraising goals.
Rallying friends, church members and local organizations in her Saratoga County community, she began raising money for her new fund. She travels to areas in need several times a year — for several weeks to a month at a time – and uses none of the money raised for her own expenses.
Flewelling has made 20 trips in 14 years. So far, she has completed the drilling and/or repair of 31 wells, funded 10 cisterns and 34 water filters
On site, Flewelling coordinates costs and workers, and supervises the drilling of wells in the bush, deserts or jungles of Tanzania, Nepal, Uganda, Guinea, Malawi and the jungle in Quito, Ecuador. Strung together by good deeds bestowed, the names sound like lines of a poem.
Some of the wells were dug to serve schools, where children were spending all day without having any water to drink. This year, water will be piped to a birthing clinic.
Retiree Carolee DeBlaere, who taught remedial reading and high school English as a member of the Shenendehowa Teachers Association in Saratoga County, met Flewelling at a gym. Recently, she turned out at a presentation at the Saratoga Library to buy Flewelling’s newly published book, “Drilling for Hope: One Woman’s Work to Provide Clean Water,” and make another donation to her causes.
“Karen has made me more globally aware through her projects,” she said. “I’ve expanded my horizons.”
Some of the wells are hand-dug and some are solar-powered. Some are deep bore hole wells. Costs include the drilling rigs, machinery, tools, equipment, pipes and labor. Her global action began with volunteer work for Earthwatch, an international environmental charity. Then she launched her own programs focused on water.
“All of this has evolved,” she said. “I was in Costa Rica and a woman saw me and asked, ‘Can you come to Guatemala?’ I went to Guatemala. I was in Saratoga at a party and a guy had seen an article about me in the paper … He said ‘They need you in Brazil.’ I went to Brazil.”
Flewelling has also raised money to buy goats, ducks, chickens, soccer balls, school supplies, toothpaste and brushes, eco stoves and vitamins. On one of her early trips, she had $200 cash. She called on the village elders, who then called in all the nearby goat herders. She bought 28 goats from different herders, and then let the elders decide which of the neediest families would receive them. Each family signs a contract (some with a thumbprint): The first female offspring must be given to another family in need. In this way, the giving goes on.
She has raised funds to keep children — who worked spraying pesticides on flowers — in school and out of the fields. She’s helped HIV-positive women start a business and donated blankets for each child in an orphanage. She’s helped fund 15 fistula operations for women who had complications from childbirth.
Handing out soccer balls brings rapid joy to Flewelling. Most of the children play with a very old, homemade ball.
“I’m always looking for a game as we drive,” she said. When she finds one and pulls over, she will present a new ball to the captain.
“I am the lucky one who can see joy on these boys’ faces,” she said.
Her first priority, though, is always the water.
“Water is the entrée,” she said, “Everything else is dessert.”
In 2011, Flewelling funded and oversaw the drilling of two wells in Tanzania. The next year she went back, because part of her work is to make sure the money is going where it is supposed to and that things are working. One of the wells served a school.
“The water from this well was plentiful,” she happily wrote in her diary. Yet, there was more than quenching thirst that satisfied her. At the school, villagers planted seedling of indigenous trees, including ebony, which the local men carve and sell. With the water available from the well, the trees could grow. At the school, the village also dug a fishpond and added water and fish. As more fish were born, the students were able to have fish for breakfast. Normally, they went the entire day without eating, Flewelling said. Extra fish will be sold to earn money.
Again, the giving goes on.
- Liza Frenette
(Karen Flewelling is a retiree member of North Colonie TA)