Words by Grace West

Raised in Ghana’s Upper East Region, Rashed Anaba didn’t just dream of having clean water, he dreamed of bringing it to his entire community. Following the loss of his father at a young age, he left school to provide for his family and fill the financial gaps. Years later, he kicked off a small tourism business that provided him with connections to those outside of Ghana. He hoped those connections could someday help bring his dream of building sustainable wells—and their water—to fruition—something that would change the lives of his community and beyond.

“I grew up and saw that there’s challenges all the time,” Rashed said. “So, my thought was that, when I grow up, how are you able to help these communities?”

But Rashed’s story is just one thread in a much larger crisis. In Ghana, nearly 3 million people still rely on surface water, any body of water that is located on top of land, as the main way to meet their daily water needs, leaving them susceptible to water-related diseases that kill approximately 19,000 individuals each year. Nearly half of these deaths are children under the age of 5. To avoid these fatalities, women all across Africa spend more than 40 billion hours in just one year making the trek to get fresh water for themselves and their families.

Rashed lived this reality. He had seen the effects in his community, and, working as a tour guide for many years, he persistently pitched his hope of clean water to tourists. Through tenacious efforts, Rashed eventually gained support from the Gold Beach Rotary Club in Oregon, who agreed to sponsor a well and fund the project.

His project beginnings sparked something bigger. For Rashed, it wasn’t just about one well, it was about supplying a sustainable solution from within. But financing wells proved to be increasingly difficult. His work had dried up when a couple from Portland, Oregon, two schoolteachers who had been funding his work retired after one was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Progress slowed, but still, the vision never faded.

What Rashed didn’t know is that his work had already planted the seeds of something much greater. Years later, through a random moment that almost felt like fate, he crossed paths with someone who would help carry that vision forward.

In 2011, Nathan Rogers found himself the furthest away from home he had ever been. Working on a senior design project at Santa Clara University for his civil engineering degree where he was inspired to develop low-cost, sustainable building methods for rural communities in Ghana and had ended up in the country’s Upper East Region for six weeks as part of his research.

This work landed him in a coffee shop off the beaten path in Bolgatanga, the capital of Ghana’s Upper Eastern Region. Rashed, who was sitting in the shop with his own coffee, noticed Rogers’ American appearance and mentioned that he had just gotten back from Portland, Oregon.

At the time Nathan and Rashed met, Rashed had already built a few wells, but for Nathan and Rashed, this was just the beginning. Over the next few years, their friendship deepened, and with it, so did their shared dream of irrevocably evolving societies.

In the years that followed their first encounter, Nathan continued to visit Ghana for his design project while Rashed kept up with his own well-building efforts.

“We stayed as friends for a few years as I continued to travel to Ghana, advising students on the project, continuing it,” Nathan recalled. “But at a point in time, we basically realized that our project could go no further.”

Eventually Nathan’s design project work reached a natural endpoint when his group had discovered that another NGO was doing very similar earth-building work and at a much more efficient clip.

One night over drinks in Bolgatanga, Nathan asked, “How much does a well cost?” When he heard that it was $4,000, he impulsively thought, “Man, I’ve got $4,000 in the bank, let’s do one.” The next morning he recalls questioning his decision to send that sum of money to someone he had only interacted with sporadically for a few years, but after reaching out to people that had previously worked with Rashed, he heard unanimous praise, “They all said ‘Yes, this guy’s amazing,’” said Nathan. “’Do it. Trust this guy.’”

That marked the beginning of their partnership and the birth of Well Constructed—a nonprofit that aims to empower community development by building wells and making clean water more accessible, but it also set the tone for how they would work together moving forward. Nathan’s leap of faith wasn’t just about funding, it was about trusting the local knowledge and leadership of those eager to make a difference. Both he and Rashed knew that success wouldn’t come from outsiders coming in with ready-made plans. Too often, well-intentioned projects fail due to a lack of understanding of of cultural nuances, local policies, or the realities of everyday life in rural Ghana. 

From the outset, they aimed to reverse that pattern. The Ghanaian team, which is made up entirely by individuals based in the Upper Eastern Region, is in charge of leading every step of the process from choosing what communities to serve to managing the day-to-day operations. The U.S. side helps mostly with the logistics, fundraising, and serving as a support system of the mission. This structure is not just symbolic, it guarantees that these decisions were made by those with lived experiences of the region's challenges and strengths.

This kind of local leadership isn’t just rare, it’s what makes this work sustainable. In many altruistic projects, the people closest to the problem are often the ones that are furthest away from the decision-making. Well Constructed flips that model on its head. By putting power and influence in the hands of those who live in and lead the communities they serve, the work becomes more resilient and a lot more respectable.

Before a well is ever drilled, the team works with residents to build a five-person board, with at least three of the spots reserved for women. Their responsibility is to collect money within the community and to deposit those funds into a dedicated maintenance fund that covers ongoing upkeep of the wells. The result is more than clean water, its ownership, accountability, and a system built to last long after drilling crews have packed up and left.

“We don’t want this to be a gift to the communities because we know that it’s a partnership,” Nathan said.

Even with a locally-driven model, the scale is still staggering. With over 500 wells already completed, some can benefit up to 1,000 people in a community; in 2025, the community size was 350 individuals to guarantee accessibility and reduce long lines during peak hours. 322 communities still remain on the waitlist, a list  that continues to grow with the lengthening drought and the delayed arrival of rainfall each year. Limited government support leaves many communities undeserved, which only motivates Well Constructed to push its support and resources further.

“It’s the love of it that keeps you going,” said Moses Anaba, the COO of Well Constructed and Rashed’s brother.

For every $10, Well Constructed is able to supply someone with clean water for 10 years. Since the creation of the very first well, Well Constructed has brought clean, reliable water to hundreds of communities across Ghana’s Upper Eastern Region, serving thousands of people. Each well means less miles walked in the grueling sun for water, fewer waterborne illnesses, more children healthy and in schools. The impact is visible in the daily rhythms of life. Its progress is measured more than in numbers. Every well is a testament to the belief that lasting change comes from when local leaders take the lead, communities invest in their own future, and partners walk alongside instead of ahead.

“So in getting clean water to each community, you see that you have liberated the entire community of so many things,” said Moses. “You see that the economic life of that community, the people, have been empowered. You see the education aspect of the children has been empowered.”

As Well Constructed marks their 10th anniversary, they will round out the 2025 year by successfully building 100 wells, bringing clean water to 250,000 individuals across all projects. The goal now is to continue building wells at as high of a rate as possible, without compromising the long-term maintenance of each site. Rashed is already dreaming ahead, envisioning a future where their work expands beyond just the Upper Eastern Region.

“If we are able to get more funding, there is no place that we can’t go and get these wells done,” Moses said.

For now though, each new well is more than just a completed project, it is Rashed’s community dream—transformed.