OUR APPROACH
How We Work
What we build, and how we build it, is determined by each community —
their needs, their knowledge, and their vision for what's possible.
PHASE 1
Listen & Commit
We begin by listening. What does this community need? What does their dream garden look like? A garden built on shared vision lasts — and every partnership must begin with a genuine commitment to organic, regenerative growing. No shortcuts. No synthetic inputs. For communities not yet ready, the partnership waits.
PHASE 2
Build the Foundation
Groundwater is tested and confirmed safe. If we draw water from the earth, we are committed to putting it back. Then the physical work begins — trenches dug, plumbing installed, fencing erected. For many women, this ends years of sleeping on the garden grounds to protect their crops.
The land becomes theirs.
PHASE 3
Bring It to Life
A solar-powered water tower rises. Taps are placed throughout the garden so every woman has access to water for her own plot. Shelters, toilets, tools, and training follow. Every community learns rainwater harvesting practices. Every family who wants one receives a fuel-efficient mud brick cooking stove.
PHASE 4
Grow Together
We stay connected — linking women with resources and support as their gardens grow. Each community runs its own microlending program. And when the garden is finally complete, we celebrate.
"Caring for nature is a vital act; both humans and animals benefit from it, so nature takes care of us in return.
In the future, I dream of becoming a major producer and achieving self-sufficiency."
Aîcha Samake — garden member, Bomboya
OUR PROGRAMS
Beyond the Garden
A garden changes what a family eats and earns.
The programs that surround it change how a community relates to its land.
RAINWATER HARVESTING
Putting Water Back
The Wash Project is committed to bringing water to people who need it — and adds one critical question: what happens to the water source in twenty years?
Every solar-powered well we install draws water from the ground. Some of that water takes decades, even centuries to accumulate in the aquifers below. Every structure we build alongside it is designed to put water back.
The most visible expression of this commitment is the stone bund: low walls placed along slopes and field boundaries to slow rainfall and hold it long enough to sink back into the earth, thus recharging the aquifer. They require no outside materials, no machinery, and no expertise that the community doesn't already possess. What looks like simple rock-moving is in fact the careful, practiced work of landscape restoration.
Our bridges serve a similar purpose at a larger scale — slowing and sinking seasonal floodwater back into the soil rather than letting it rush away as destructive runoff. Where the terrain allows, we also use swales — shallow channels cut along the contour of the land — to spread surface water further and give it more time to percolate.
Together these methods recharge the aquifers that sustain every water source we have provided. They help restore water to neighboring wells. Regenerative water design is not an add-on to our work — it is the philosophy that holds all of it together.
Each stone bund is constructed to harvest the most rainfall possible. As the aquifer recharges, the quantity of water in surrounding wells has also increased -- a sign that the system is working.
The full participation of our partner communities is essential for the project to succeed. Here, women are collecting stones to be placed on the perimeter of their new garden.
Water is being harvested by a swale (at left) and a stone bund (at right). The rainy season brings so much water that it requires multiple approaches to maximize rainwater harvesting. The goal is to sink enough water from the rainy season to make it through 9 months of drought each year.
Each stone bund is constructed to harvest the most rainfall possible. As the aquifer recharges, the quantity of water in surrounding wells has also increased -- a sign that the system is working.
FUEL-EFFICIENT COOKING STOVES
The Stove that Heals the Forest
For decades, rural women in this region of Mali have relied on firewood and charcoal as their primary cooking fuel — walking increasingly long distances to cut down trees, depleting the forest canopy, accelerating soil erosion, and pushing the landscape closer to the advancing Saharan desert.
The Wash Project's fuel-efficient mud brick stove program addresses this cycle at its root. By dramatically reducing the amount of wood needed for cooking, the stoves have greatly reduced deforestation.
Because gardening is more lucrative and less physically exhausting than collecting firewood, women across our partner villages have largely stopped cutting trees for income altogether.
Now, the existing tree canopy is beginning to recover, biodiversity is returning, and the soil is healing — not because trees were planted, but because the pressure on the existing forest was removed. Sata Camara and her team have installed hundreds of stoves across partner villages.