James Abell and Ethan Roths, juniors at St. X, frequently volunteer at WaterStep. WaterStep receives shoe donations that volunteers sort and sell to a wholesaler that helps WaterStep fund their global projects.

“It looked like something I was interested in and wanted to help,” Roths said.

Abell and Roths have freely chosen to answer a call to service, but little did they know they have been working with the director of our brother school in Kenya. We had the privilege of having Br. Raphael Wanjala, C.F.X, visit our campus last week. Br. Raphael first came to Louisville in 2019 and started working with WaterStep and was trained virtually on how to cultivate solutions to water issues within his community.

Since he was trained he has worked tirelessly with many communities in Kenya to clean water and save lives. Daniel Dida, Br. Raphael’s former university student, has begun working with WaterStep as well, helping to tackle the contaminated water crisis in Kenya.

WaterStep has a belief system that empowers one person who is to go out and empower others in their community. So, when they train one person on how to transform contaminated water into drinkable water, they empower that person to then go and train and empower others.

Training and empowering people around the world to cultivate solutions to issues within their personal communities, WaterStep remotely reaches and instructs anyone anywhere in the world through over the internet. WaterStep instructs them on how to identify their water issues and apply WaterStep’s straightforward technology and training as fixes.

The basic technology that WaterStep utilizes all around the world to decontaminate water and make it safe to drink. WaterStep’s technology, which only requires salt, a car battery, and a basic filtering system, has prevented hundreds of deaths. Thanks to the Xaverian Mission and Xaverian students, water around the world is being decontaminated.