A Mission of FIRE and Water Matt Hangen, Water4 col laborate to provide water pumps in Africa

A Mission of FIRE and Water

Matt Hangen, Water4 collaborate to provide water pumps in Africa

BY GARLAND MCWATTERS

THe SPiRiT OF LeADiNg

et out to serve and solve problems and become a leader in the process. Matt hangen, president and CEO of the faith-based non-profit Water4, is one of the latter.

The desire to serve came after several families reached out to serve and encourage him as he struggled to find his way during his adolescent and teenage years. “I was told I was a hopeless delinquent by the school board,” Matt confesses about being kicked out of the seventh grade in his small south Alabama hometown.

His parents used an inheritance to enroll him in a private school. There he met a

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handful of people, “Who saw beyond the troubled child that I was and saw some potential.”

He described having a, “profound religious experience” his senior year in high school. “I heard a voice say that I didn’t need to hurt or hurt others anymore.” The experience moved him to enroll in a Bible college and go into Christian ministry to serve.

First trip to Africa

During his junior year at Faulkner University, Matt became involved in missions and raised money for a relief effort in Uganda to help the internal displaced person (IDP) crisis there. He went to Uganda to deliver the money and ended up spending two months hitchhiking the country passing out food and blankets at IDP camps. The experience motivated Matt, with his new bride, Grace, to head for tiny West Africa nation of Togo as missionaries. That’s when they discovered the huge water crisis. “One out of five kids die before the age of five from the water crisis. Eighty percent of women in sub-Saharan Africa have to carry water more than three miles a day.”

He started building pumps and saw first-hand how clean water changed an entire village.

Matt was cobbling together makeshift pumps from

Dick Greenly, Water4 founder (right), with Nesto Togoles, local entrepreneur

Staff in Ghana Celebrating new Piped Water System, above. Right, Matt with Akua Annoh local entrepreneur and water systrem customer. Matt competes in Tulsa Ironman competition

scavenged parts and working with local men to dig wells in the community. He searched the internet for resources and any kind of direction he could to help him make better pumps. That’s when he found Water4 and Richard Greenly.

Serendipity?

Richard Greenly, and his wife Terri, were the successful owners of Pumps of Oklahoma. Richard had committed himself to addressing the water pump failure problem in Africa but couldn’t find a way to make his pumps available in those countries.

Water4 came into being after Richard had ventured into the international issue of clean water shortage because a customer challenged him to take a trip to rural China to install one of the first solar water systems there. When others heard of Richard’s trip, they provided startup funding for what became Water4, a faith-based non-profit dedicated to getting pumps into sub-Saharan countries in dire need of clean water.

Matt began using Water4’s drill kits and worked alongside the village men to dig and maintain their wells. That also gave him the credibility to do what he went to Africa to do—share his faith.

Matt affectionately refers to Greenly as a, “Serendipity magnet. He says yes to everything. He’s totally not risk adverse. Good stuff just happens because of that spirit.”

empowerment through enterprise

n 2010, Matt and Water4 joined forces. Matt became the director of training over the continent of Africa. He trained locals to install and maintain the water systems. As he learned, the pump technology was not the real problem. There were pumps all over the continent, but the organizations that installed them did not

maintain them. The locals did not regard the pumps as an asset. Water4 found a better way.

Instead of merely installing pumps without leaving a way to maintain them, Water4 developed locally owned enterprises that had the incentive to install and maintain the pumps using the Water4 technology.

“If the pumps could be seen as a monetary asset, there would be a natural incentive put in place to maintain it.” Matt believes in virtuous enterprise where business owners and customers meet to support each other.

Matt says one of his most powerful leadership lessons learned is that you can’t judge a book by its cover. He explained that we often are conditioned to see people living in material poverty as helpless and needing someone to rescue them when, in fact, they are eager for empowerment and self-reliance.

Water4 couples a faith-based message with their mission to install both free standing hand pumps and entire community piped water systems. It is based on an acronym, FIRE, standing for Faith, Innovation, Reimagine, and Empower.

Passing the torch

Matt says the Water4 experience has taught him that leadership is not spending all your own energy making things happen. Instead, he describes it as using your own torch to light another person’s torch who passes it on to others and so forth. More gets done sooner that way. Listen to the entire conversation with Matt Hangen on the Spirit of Leading podcast. https://liveinpowered. com/088-matt-hangen-fire-and-water4/ Listen to the complete Spirit of Leading podcast interview at https://liveinotholes/ n

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