"And we thank you, Mercy Corps. You're changing lives."

- OPRAH WINFREY, DECEMBER 2005

[ SHAKEELA'S STORY]

Shakeela, 14, is the youngest of a dozen kids in a working-class family in Pakistan's impoverished Baluchistan province. For two years, she was responsible for an essential household chore: fetching the family's drinking water.

This was no easy task. Because of the distance to a clean well, Shakeela required four hours to pump and lug home the 10 liters of water her family needed each day. Despite starting out early in the morning, she usually couldn't complete her task in time for school.

In April 2006, Mercy Corps installed two new, 100-foot-deep hand pumps in Shakeela's town of Goth Kumacha and helped form a citizen-development board to maintain them. Installing hand pumps is part of a larger disaster-preparedness program that helps brace Baluchistan's communities against natural catastrophes — namely floods, which can contaminate shallower drinking-water wells.

With the new pumps, Shakeela walks a shorter route to clean water. As a result, Shakeela resumed her education last summer as a fourth grader — two years behind her peers — and successfully passed her annual exams. Her dream to become a doctor is back on track.