Posted By Hayley Stewart
Nestor is a 4th-generation welder and machinist living in the Kara region of Togo.
Nestor is a 4th-generation welder and machinist living in the Kara region of Togo. In 1995, after working odd jobs for $0.80-$1.00 per day, he finally saved enough money to purchase tools and open his own shop. Fifteen years later, in 2010, Nestor met Water4.
Water4 had trained several drill teams in the area and was looking for an economical way to supply the teams with the parts they needed to continue drilling. Together with Matt Hangen, Water4’s Director of Implementation, Nestor dreamed, created and innovated and soon began supplying the teams with the crosspiece for the pumps.
“I saw the way his heart was, the way he understood the need for the gift of water in Togo,” says Hangen. “I knew Nestor was going to be the guy who would lead and really carry the load of the movement.”
“I’m very proud to be in this field,” says Nestor, who now serves as the Director for the Northern Togo Project, Water For Togo, as well as the fabricator of all surface assembly, well seals, and tool repair for all the teams in the nation. “It makes me very happy to see people who drank from the river now drinking potable water.”
With Nestor’s help, the five Togo teams drilled 106 wells in 2014, bringing access to clean water to more than 10,000 people.
