Last updated at 07:14, Friday, 04 May 2012

A group of Cockermouth people are looking to raise £10,000 to help supply clean water to villages in West Africa.

THIRST AID: Members of King’s Church, Cockermouth, who are raising money to help build a well in West Africa, from left: Ben Agnew, Deborah Hall, Judith Cable, Raymond Hall, Steve Kingsley and Mark Armstrong

Members of the town’s King’s Church hope to raise the money for a well and water pump to supply fresh water to 3,200 people in Burkina Faso.

Raymond Hall, of Isel Road, launched the appeal in Cockermouth after his daughter Jackie Johnson held a bag pack to raise £1,400 at Marks & Spencer in Warrington, where she lives.

Mr Hall aid: “Up to 20,000 children in West Africa die annually before the age of five because of the lack of fresh water.”

The project has so far raised £2,600 to be targeted at three specific villages.

It is being overseen by Boureima Diallo, an aid worker born in Burkina Faso and educated in the UK.

Mr Hall said volunteers would look to raise further funds by running around eight lakes in the Lake District and will also have a stall at Cockermouth’s Georgian Fair tomorrow and at a monthly farmers’ market next month.

It is hoped that the money can be raised and the well built by October.

Steve Kingsley, 63, of Derwent Mills, Cockermouth, one of the people involved in the project, said: “With this new clean water source we will be affecting tens of thousands of people in generations to come.”

First published at 06:10, Friday, 04 May 2012
Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk