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African Reflections Foundation — non-profit organization 501(c)(3)

Historical ARF initiative · 2016

The Village Heart Kids

A project built around a simple object: a water can a child could carry home.

The Village Heart began as a project to help schoolchildren understand the wells being built at their own schools — and why clean water mattered to them at all.

Each child was given a water can. It let them take three litres of clean water home to their family every day. The point was partly practical and partly educational: the can made an abstraction into something a child carried in their hand.

Children were encouraged to keep their cans clean. Every six months there was a competition, and the child with the cleanest can received a year's worth of school supplies.

The project also gave the book its name.

3 litres
Carried home by each child, every day
US $0.60
Cost of one water can — as recorded in 2016
Every 6 months
A competition for the best-kept can
580 children
Cans funded by Maya Charles of Bournemouth, UK

Figures as published in 2016. The can price is a historical cost, not a current one.

First Village Heart Kids Ambassador

Maya Charles

From Bournemouth in the United Kingdom, Maya raised funds and bought water cans for 580 schoolchildren, and became the first Village Heart Kids Ambassador.

Recorded in the 2016 publication. Her current involvement has not been verified.

A second school initiative · The Village Heart, page 47

Tilapia farms at the school gate

Where a school had a well, the Foundation donated cement so a fishpond could be built beside it. The schoolchildren dug the ponds themselves and filled them from the well.

Tilapia grows and multiplies quickly, which made the ponds two things at once: a way for a school to raise its own money, and a way for children to learn to build and manage something that belonged to them.

Recorded in the 2016 publication. Whether these ponds are still in operation has not been verified.

  • A rendered and painted school building with an alphabet mural along its wall and pupils in the doorway.
    Archive photograph · The Village Heart
  • A rural school building constructed from mud and sticks, with pupils outside and seated in the open classroom.
    Archive photograph · The Village Heart
  • A student in school uniform seated outdoors, looking towards the camera.
    Archive photograph · The Village Heart
  • School pupils sitting together outdoors during a break.
    Archive photograph · The Village Heart
  • A group of school pupils in uniform gathered closely together indoors.
    Archive photograph · The Village Heart
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