Current seventh-grade MERIT students read A Long Walk to Water in the fifth grade. Afterward, they organized a learning experience for TCMS as a "walk and learn." These students taught the other grade levels and members of the community about the lack of water in Sudan while raising money for a well. After two years (including setbacks because of the pandemic) the well was installed!

Majok, on World Water Day, installed a water well in Luelpanang, South Sudan. The tile honoring Thomas County Middle School MERIT program was attached, and pictures were taken. Everyone is extremely excited about this project's completion, as it reaches people who are about 25 miles east of Rumbek, a large town in Lakes State area of the country, a very under-developed part of the world that was without access to clean water. It was thought that this well would be built at a school in Rumbek, but Majok found when he arrived that the school had been able to arrange for the drilling of a well before he arrived.

Because of a lack of digital access in much of the country, transmitting pictures is very difficult. "It takes a long, long time to load", Majok says. While satellite phones are used by many, the sending of pictures is difficult, so sending pictures was a time-consuming task.

Majok is now building a second well, so his time is spent in the rural areas away from better communications in hopes of proving clean water to these rural communities.