It’s been almost a decade since Christian Maboko fled his home country of Burundi and spent time at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.

At the time, he frequently watched as people from a nearby community came to the camp for water. Sometimes, he told his mother to give them a can of water so they could go home with something that was clean.

In 2022, Maboko earned an opportunity to study in Armenia, then coming across a YouTube video of a young child who donated clean water in honor of their birthday.

It was at that moment he knew he wanted to do something similar. Maboko applied for a grant, which he later received, to help install the first water pump in the camp he lived at during his summer break.

He saw how appreciative people were, prompting him to launch the nonprofit AridVitalit

See Full Page