Impact reports

2012 was our tenth anniversary for Sand Dams Worldwide (formerly known as Excellent Development). This report highlights the impacts of our work up to 2012, who we worked with to achieve them, and how our supporters helped us to realise our vision that millions of the poorest people's lives are transformed with sand dams. Click here to read and download.

As we celebrate over 20 years of impact, we are delighted to share with you this impact report that we hope illustrates the effectiveness of sand dams and our work supporting dryland communities to access clean water and food security for life.

We have enabled the construction of over 1,000 sand dams, providing over 1 million people in 10 countries with clean water - and the accompanying climate-smart agriculture and environmental protection practices across our projects have brought a multitude of benefits to the dryland communities that we support.

The impacts range from saving time, to improving sanitation, diet and people’s overall health. Hunger is alleviated and food security increased, in turn building drought resistance and climate resilience. With surplus produce to sell, household income is increased and poverty reduced, so that families can pay school fees to help their children get a good education, and communities can rebuild their livelihoods. Sand dam projects also help empower women and improve gender equality. There are benefits to the environment too, with degraded land restored and regreening of local environments.

All of that starts with a sand dam.

Now that we and our research partners have been able to collate years of data, at a time where extreme weather, poverty and food shortages are affecting so many around the world, we hope that supporters like you will be inspired by this report, and motivated to continue joining us on our mission (to enable 1 million sand dams for 0.5 billion people by 2050), to advocate for sand dams, and to champion this simple but life-changing technology so that millions more will be able to flourish for generations to come.

Click here to read our 2022 impact report