‘Sheffield man has to return home from charity walk due to conflict in Africa. Vows to build project in conflict zone’.

On Friday 24th October, Sheffield water charity 'The Long Well Walk' will be launching their most ambitious project yet: a 30 day crowdfunding campaign aiming to raise £20,000 to fund the construction of a water and sanitation block at a primary school in South Sudan.

Walking For Water press release

The Long Well Walk began in 2012 as founder Liam Garcia's dream of walking all the way from Sheffield in the UK to Cape Town in South Africa to raise awareness of the global water and sanitation crisis. Nearly 800 million people worldwide do not have access to clean, safe water or sanitation and every 20 seconds a child dies as a result. This also means millions of women and children have to walk over 10 miles per day across treacherous terrain to collect clean water. These are all issues The Long Well Walk hopes to address. We're walking for water so others don't have to.

On March 22th of this year, what began as a daydream was made reality when Liam set off on his 11,000-mile hike from Sheffield city centre with two aims: to raise global awareness of the current water and sanitation crisis, and to gather donations to fund water projects across Sub-Saharan Africa.

After a bit of a bumpy start with technical difficulties that literally saw his backpack explode, Liam soldiered on and this month successfully completed the European leg of his journey, walking a whopping 2,251 miles from Sheffield to Sicily in 168 days, which is a huge milestone achieved for The Long Well Walk.

However, conditions in South Sudan and surrounding countries are simply too volatile to allow Liam to continue any further and so he has had to temporarily postpone completion and return to Sheffield for the time being. Not one to accept defeat, Liam is determined that the show must go on and has vowed that The Long Well Walk will set up their next project in Kuda, a South Sudanese village just 28 miles from the dangerously violent capital, Juba.

December 2013 saw the outbreak of civil war in South Sudan, which has since been responsible for the deaths of over 10,000 civilians and has seen over 1 million displaced from their homes. Consequently, several large NGOs have had to withdraw their support from the wider area and focus their efforts on emergency relief in conflict zones, leaving people living outside of the capital more vulnerable than ever and incredibly susceptible to malnutrition and disease.

Particularly, in Kuda, the local primary school does not have access to toilet facilities, leaving children to defecate in nearby bushes and wash their hands in the river, if at all. Their lack of access to clean water is also detrimental to their education as 10 students must leave their classrooms twice a day and walk a gruelling 3 hours to collect 40 litres of water each.

The Long Well Walk has recognized how damaging this is, not only to the 367 students of Kuda primary school, but the Kuda community as a whole, and so, on Friday 24th October, will be launching their largest, most ambitious project yet: a crowdfunding campaign to raise £20,000 in just 1 month to fund the construction of a water and sanitation block at Kuda Primary School in South Sudan.

The campaign will go live at 12pm on Friday 24th October on the crowdfunding website www.zequs.com. Just search 'Walking For Water' or 'The Long Well Walk' to read more about the project or donate to the campaign.Please also check out our campaign video with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg sharing his thoughts on Liam's journey!

Further information may be found at www.thelongwellwalk.org, or www.facebook.com/thelongwellwalk