We have put a design studio live for our water projects. You choose the kind of well, the country it goes to, the colour of the structure, and the words on the plaque. It draws itself in front of you while you decide.
Then, and only then, you talk to us about funding it.
That order is the whole point, and it is the opposite of how this normally works.
The usual sequence in this sector is give, then find out. You pick an amount, you pay, and somewhere down the line a photograph may or may not arrive. The decision you make is about a number. It is not about a thing.
I wanted to move the decision earlier. If you have sat and thought about how many tapstands a village needs, you have already thought about the queue at the pump, and about who is standing in it. You are no longer choosing a donation size. You are specifying a piece of infrastructure that will be there in twenty years.
That is a slower way to give. It is also a more honest one, because by the time you press send you know exactly what you are asking us to build.
There are four levels in the water studio, and they are genuinely different objects.
A hand pump well serves 80 to 150 people and runs for ten years and more, from £1,000. A solar well serves over a thousand people and lasts twenty to twenty-five years, from £2,500. A water filtration plant serves hundreds of households, from £8,000. A solar water tower serves five thousand people or more and stands for twenty-five years, from £30,000. There is also a household version of the hand pump, the same pump on a shallower bore at a single family compound, for one to four families, at £150.
Then the country. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uganda and East Africa, wider Sub-Saharan Africa, or wherever the need is greatest that season.
Then the build itself. The colour of the structure, including the Sindh blue we delivered in Kot Diji. The accent on the taps and handle. One to four tapstands. A standard tank or a larger one for a growing community. Add-ons if the site warrants them, an extra tapstand at £250, a larger storage tank at £350, a submersible pump at £400, a filtration unit at £450, a solar pump upgrade at £900. Some, like an animal trough or a handwashing station, we price at scoping rather than pretend to know in advance.
Every one of those choices moves the picture on the screen and moves the running estimate.
The last section of the studio is the one people spend the longest on.
You choose the plaque material, and who the water is dedicated to. In memory of a loved one. On behalf of your family. As a gift for an Eid, a wedding, a birth. Or anonymous, which plenty of people choose. Then you write the two lines that go on it.
Most people who build in memory of someone are building for a parent.
Sa'd ibn Ubadah asked the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, which charity was best, after his mother had died. The answer was water. So he dug a well and said, this is for the mother of Sa'd. (Sunan Abi Dawud 1681)
The water keeps giving on their behalf, every morning, long after everyone has stopped talking about it. That is what the plaque is recording.
The figure at the bottom of the screen is an estimate. It says "from" and it means it.
Costs move by country and by site. A hand pump in Uganda genuinely starts at £1,800, not the £1,000 that a Pakistan site starts at, and the studio raises the floor accordingly instead of quoting you a number we would later have to walk back. Drilling depth, ground conditions and access change what a site actually costs. So the estimate gets you into the right range, and we confirm the real figure with you at scoping, before anything is committed.
Whatever you specify, some things do not vary. Committee-verified siting. Drilling and fittings. Pump and tap. A dua at the ground-breaking. Photographs and film throughout. GPS and a completion report. A named plaque. And a verification visit twelve months later, because a well that has stopped working is not sadaqah jariyah, and the only way to know is to go back and look.
We check your design against live sites and confirm what is buildable where. We come back with a costed plan, including anything that was priced at scoping. You confirm the plaque wording, and we break ground with a dua in your name.
You can also download your design as a PDF, or send the link to your family so they can open the exact project you built and add to it.
Design yours at sdqa.org.uk/my-water
Irfan Akram, Co-Founder and Chair, SDQA. I would rather you spent twenty minutes choosing the tapstands than twenty seconds choosing an amount. The well lasts longer than both.
