An Irish water charity since 1995

Clean water, built with the people who live there.

For thirty years we have worked alongside local partner organisations in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to build wells, rainwater harvesting systems and sanitation that lasts. No parachuting in. No badges on the side of a truck. Just water that still flows a decade later.

Give once or monthly Read our accounts

Before anything else, we owe you the truth about 2023.

In 2023 a junior bookkeeper at Brightwater was found to have taken a significant sum from the charity over a two-year period. She was prosecuted. The money was largely recovered. The entire board resigned on principle, even though none of them were personally implicated.

A new board came in. A new CEO joined in early 2026. We have rebuilt our financial controls from the ground up, and we now publish our full accounts, trustees’ reports and independent audits every year. You can read them below. If you would rather hear it in plain language first, we would be glad to talk to you directly.

See the full transparency page →
A community on the edge of a lake in East Africa

We do not arrive with the answer.

Nine people work out of our office in Dublin. Around forty volunteers work on the ground across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. But the actual work, the boreholes drilled, the tanks set on the roofs, the hand-washing stations maintained, is done by local partner organisations who have been there for years and will be there for years after.

Our job is to fund them properly, check the work is sound, and report honestly on what happened to the money. That is a smaller role than most charities describe, and we think that is the point.

How we choose partners

Thirty years, plainly counted.

The numbers below are drawn from audited accounts and partner field reports. We do not round up.

30 Years of operation
3 Countries, one region
9 Staff in Dublin
~40 Volunteers on the ground

Where we work

Three countries, chosen because we have long-standing partners we trust. We would rather go deep in a few places than thin across a continent.

Aerial view of a village near water

Kenya

Rift Valley & coastal regions

Borehole rehabilitation and rainwater harvesting with local partner organisations in rural communities.

Clean water being poured into a glass

Tanzania

Northern highlands

Sanitation systems and community hand-washing stations attached to primary schools and health posts.

Hand pouring water, black and white

Uganda

Lakeside districts

New well construction and long-term maintenance contracts so the infrastructure still works in ten years.

Our partners on the ground

They are not our beneficiaries. They are the reason any of this works. The organisations below design, deliver and maintain the projects we fund, and they deserve to be named.

[Partner Organisation 1] [Partner Organisation 2] [Partner Organisation 3] [Partner Organisation 4]

Our accounts, in full.

Five years of independently audited accounts, trustees’ reports and programme spending breakdowns. No summary PDFs, no selective numbers. The same files we file with the Charities Regulator.

The most useful thing you can do is give monthly.

Regular giving is what lets us commit to partner organisations for years at a time, which is what turns a well into a well that still works in 2036. Any amount helps. Ten euro a month is genuinely useful.

Give monthly Give once Major donor enquiry

Talk to us.

If you are considering a larger gift, have questions about our governance, or want to hear directly from Aoife or Maeve, please get in touch. We would rather have the conversation than send you a brochure.

Brightwater Foundation
Dublin, Ireland
Or email us directly: hello@brightwater.ie