Água pela Vida — A Well for the Noke Koi
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” W. H. Auden
Água pela Vida · A Shamanic Supply Community Project
A well for the Noke Koi
Clean water for Noke Koi families returning to life deeper in the forest. One solar-powered artesian well — 10,000 litres a day, reaching every family. Give $10, and $10 lands with the project.
Choose an amount
A donation, not a purchase. Nothing is sent to you and it is not tax-deductible. It checks out like any order; 100% goes to the well.
The promise
Give $10, and $10 lands with the project.
Why
A return to the deep forest
The Noke Koi — known in Brazil as the Katukina — live on the Terra Indígena Campina/Katukina near Cruzeiro do Sul, in the far west of the Brazilian Amazon. If you have ever ordered from us, you know the Katukina name: theirs is a medicine tradition we have worked alongside, family to family, for years.
A group of Noke Koi families — grandmothers, parents, children, and medicine makers among them — have chosen to move deeper into the forest: to live closer to nature and to carry on traditional medicine-making the way their elders practised it. The one thing the new village site does not have is clean water. Today these families draw from open forest sources — brown floodwater for washing, the same water for drinking. The families count the cost in illness: diarrhoea, vomiting, intestinal infections, worms and hepatitis A from the water itself, and malaria and dengue from the mosquitoes that breed along the river everyone must walk to each day. A government project, if it ever comes, is years away. So they asked for help to build it themselves.
Água pela Vida is that build: one artesian well, drilled 60 metres down to a productive aquifer, with a submersible pump running entirely on solar — 10,000 litres of clean water a day, reaching 100% of the families in the village.
One shot that explains the whole project: the washing-up and a child’s drinking water, drawn from the same brown creek. The well replaces this — and the sickness that comes with it.
The build
What $7,500 buys, exactly
These are no longer estimates. We hold a signed quotation — Orçamento nº 10/2026 from Perfurações Vale, the well-drilling company in Cruzeiro do Sul, issued 9 September 2026 to the community's own coordinator — for the complete job, ready to execute within 30 days of commissioning.
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Artesian well — drilling contract 60 m tubular well: drilling, casing, filters, gravel pack, pump installation and geologist supervision (R$26,135)
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$4,800 |
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Solar pumping kit Panels, submersible pump, mounting structures and control panel (R$12,000)
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$2,200 |
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Contingency Exchange-rate movement, fuel, freight, the unexpected
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$500 |
| Total | $7,500 |
The signed quotation totals R$38,135 for the complete well and solar system; the contingency line absorbs exchange movement and river logistics. Read the quotation itself (PDF, Portuguese) → — published with personal contact details redacted. Once the $7,500 is reached, donations close and the well gets built. This is the first of more projects with this and other communities, coming soon; each will have its own page like this one. If the full amount isn't reached by the end of 2026, everything raised still goes to the well.
The work
What the money does
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1Site preparation
Clearing and levelling the ground so the drilling rig can stand safely, right in the village.
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2Transport upriver
Moving the rig, casing and panels to the territory — Amazon logistics is the job the contingency fund exists for.
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3Drilling the well
60 metres down to a clean aquifer — drilled, cased, cleaned and developed, with a geologist supervising the work.
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4Solar & pump
Panels, controller and a submersible pump — water flowing on sunlight alone, no diesel, no grid.
The donors
The people building this well
Donor names appear here moments after each gift arrives — your name, your business's, or anonymous. This page is a permanent record of everyone who gave, what was raised, and the well that was built.
- Donor names appear here, moments after each gift arrives.
Payouts
Once the target is met, we pay the suppliers directly — the well, then the solar system, then any remainder. Photos of the construction and the finished well follow.
- No payouts yet — the first payment will appear here, with its receipt.
The build diary
Watch the water arrive
From the first cleared patch of ground to the first clean cup poured, this is where the well takes shape. Photos come straight from the village as each stage is finished — the same families who asked for the well, showing you what your gift built.
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Coming soon
Stage 1
The ground is cleared
The village picks the spot and makes room for the rig.
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Coming soon
Stage 2
The rig comes upriver
Drill, casing and panels make the journey into the territory.
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Coming soon
Stage 3
The drill hits water
Sixty metres down, the aquifer.
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Coming soon
Stage 4
The first clean cup
Panels up, pump running, water flowing on sunlight.
Want to be here when it happens? Give to the well and your name is on the list beside these photos, for good.
Questions
Honest answers
Is my donation tax-deductible?
No. Shamanic Supply is a business, not a registered charity, and US taxpayers cannot deduct gifts to foreign recipients anyway. We would rather say that plainly than dress it up. What you get instead is a public ledger showing your money arriving where it was promised.
Do I get anything for donating?
No — nothing is sent to you, and there are no rewards, discounts or perks at any tier. That is deliberate: it keeps your gift a gift, entirely separate from anything we sell.
How do I know the money reaches the village?
Because we don't send it to a middleman — we pay the drilling and solar companies directly, and publish every payment on this page with dates and amounts. We have known and worked with Katukina families for years, and we will be showing you the photos as the well goes in.
Why not GoFundMe or a crowdfunding site?
Platforms take fees — typically several percent, plus payment costs — and Brazilian platforms can't easily accept foreign cards at all. Running it through our own store means we can absorb the costs ourselves, so the full amount you give goes to the project.
What happens when the goal is reached?
Donations close and the well gets built — construction begins about a month after the goal is reached, and the well is completed a couple of weeks after that. If giving tips past the total before donations close, the overflow goes to the tribe for the project's incidentals — the next project starts from zero. We'll keep this page updated with payments and photos through to the finished well. More projects with this and other communities are coming soon, each with its own page. If the target isn't reached by the end of 2026, everything raised still goes to the well.
Can I be named as a donor?
Yes. When you donate, you can enter the name to show on the ledger — your own name or your business's. Leave it blank and you stay anonymous. Businesses can also give their website, and we'll link the name — a plain text link, no logos or taglines, added at our discretion. The donor list stays on this page permanently, alongside the record of what was built. We never publish email addresses.
Water is the source of life
For families choosing the old way of living — deeper in the forest, closer to the medicines, in balance with the land as their elders lived — a well is what makes the return possible. Haux haux.
Give to the well →Água pela Vida is a fundraising effort run by Shamanic Supply on behalf of the Noke Koi community of the Terra Indígena Campina/Katukina, Acre, Brazil. Donations are voluntary gifts, not purchases and not tax-deductible charitable contributions; nothing is provided in return. All donations are final and non-refundable under any circumstances. Shamanic Supply covers all card and transfer fees and forwards 100% of donations to the project's suppliers. This effort is independent of, and unconnected to, the sale of any product on this site.