One little girl brings water and hope to Africa
At first glance, Pearl Fisher seems like an average little girl; she just had a birthday and is a bright, happy 7-year-old. She loves her friends and dogs and her American Girl dolls and she loves to play her violin. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find an extraordinary person who is spearheading clean water for impoverished Africans, standing up for education for girls and showing what it means to provide hope for the future.
Pearl’s passion started with an International Baccalaureate Unit about water at The Healdsburg School, where she will be entering the second grade.
“I saw videos of people who had to walk a long way and I wanted to help them,” Pearl said. “There were girls, in Africa, and they weren’t even going to a well, but for dirty water in a river.”
“I remember one thing you told me at the beginning,” Pearl’s dad Greg Fisher said. “It was pretty clear to you that it was girls who were doing all this walking, and what you said to me was ‘Those girls could be in school and reading,’ instead of walking back and forth getting water for their families.”
“I saw a video about a girl, who first thing in the morning she had to do all the chores in the house for the animals, then she had to do the walk, and then she got to go to school, but in the afternoon she had to do it again,” Pearl agreed.
Pearl’s mom Kim Dow is a graphic designer, and helped Pearl get her note card project off the ground. The cards are on heavy stock, and feature simple, but compelling line drawings of a squirrel, bat, elephant, lion, fawn and fox. GW2 Printing in Santa Rosa donated the printing costs.
Dow also set up a Facebook page and website for Pearl Builds A Well. You can make a direct donation, order cards, and learn about the organization the funds benefit — the nonprofit Water4, a Christian missionary organization that doesn’t just build wells, but focuses on “recruiting and equipping exceptional African men and women to end their water crisis in their lifetime.”
“What the organization does is they are not in the business of drilling wells themselves,” Greg said. “They are regionally setting up drilling businesses. They’ve figured out that making a well is about $2,000, but creating a community resource costs about $3,500. The $2,000 will get the hole in the ground, the $3,500 will get maintenance and management and good retrieval of the water so the whole community can use it.”
In addition to card sales and raising money online, Pearl and several friends have run a lemonade stand and recently ran a bake sale at the Piper Street block party on July 4. “That was so much fun,” Pearl said.
In addition to the video showing the plight of water gatherers, Pearl was also inspired by another video of a young boy named Ryan who also raises money for wells, and in addition to fundraising, asked for donations in lieu of birthday parties or presents, something Pearl does as well.
While her parents are impressed and in full support, Fisher admits he and his wife were a little skeptical at first. “I think its safe to say for the two of us, our kid is always impressing us and showing us that we have a long way to go as adults,” he said. “My first reaction was that she hasn’t thought this through. When a kids says ‘I don’t want birthday presents or a party’ you think, ‘Now, you’re not thinking about this, you’re going to be sad on your birthday.’ But that’s not been the case; she’s followed this with a great deal of commitment and intention and we’re really proud of her, obviously. When she first came to us we were willing to help her for as long as she wanted to do it. She had set a lofty, but reasonable goal, $2,000 seemed possible. We had to help her and stay on her, but we had no idea we’d make it to $5,000.
To date, Pearl has raised just shy of $5,000, on the way to being enough for two wells. One is already being installed in the Congo for the local Pygmy population, something Pearl dreams of seeing. “They are so short a grown man is as tall as me,” she marveled. “I wish I could go and see.”
“You keep going kid, we may not have a choice,” Fisher said with a laugh. “You keep doing good works, we’re going to have to go. I’ll have to sell my old truck for the tickets, but that’s OK, I can do that.”
Pearl’s Cards can be purchased locally at Yoga on Center, the Dry Creek Road Valero station, Comstock Winery and Dragonfly Farm. Cards can also be purchased on her website, which also takes direct donations. For more information and to order cards or donate, check out www.pearlbuildsawell.com.
