In 2012, Monsignor Frank Bognanno, a longtime Des Moines priest and cancer survivor, traveled to Tanzania with Dr. Richard Deming and Above + Beyond Cancer to climb Africa’s highest mountain.
Monsignor Frank had spent his life serving others. But he couldn’t have known that this journey would lead to an entirely new mission.
After coming down from Kilimanjaro, a series of introductions brought Monsignor Frank to the Catholic Diocese of Moshi, where he met the local bishop.
Monsignor Frank returned home to Des Moines and offered to help, beginning a relationship between his parish community in Iowa and a parish in Tanzania.
When Monsignor Frank returned to Tanzania the following year, he asked the bishop what was needed most.
The answer was simple.
At schools throughout the region, water collected from rooftops, wells, streams and other sources could become contaminated before children drank it.
The consequences reached far beyond thirst.
Children became sick. Some had to leave school in the middle of the day. Others drank unsafe water at home or from streams while walking to school.
Monsignor Frank saw a problem that could be solved.
His response?
“Well, we got to purify that water.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
Working with friends and supporters in Iowa, Catholic leaders in Tanzania, local engineers, contractors, schools and communities, an idea became a mission.
Purify Project was born.
What began with one priest asking how he could help has grown into an ongoing effort to bring safe drinking water to children throughout Tanzania.
Today, Purify Project identifies schools and communities struggling with contaminated water, tests their water sources and works with local partners to develop purification systems appropriate for each location.
66 purification systems have been installed, providing safe water at schools where children once faced illness from something most of us rarely have to think about: taking a drink.
For Monsignor Frank, one of the most powerful moments came when he returned to Tanzania after systems had been installed.
The children weren’t going home sick halfway through the school day anymore.
They could walk over, get a drink of clean water—and go back to being kids.
Spend a few minutes talking with Monsignor Frank about Tanzania and eventually he stops talking about water.
He starts talking about the people.
He remembers children crowding around him and holding his hands. He talks about the religious sisters who dedicate their lives to educating them. He remembers families and villages with very little by American standards who nevertheless welcomed visitors with extraordinary generosity.
Monsignor Frank says the people he met in Tanzania are among the most appreciative, joyful and loving people he has ever encountered.
Their generosity made an impression on him, too.
In villages where families might grow only a small patch of corn, Monsignor Frank watched neighbors share what they had when another family’s crop failed.
That spirit of community became part of Purify Project as well.
This isn’t about Americans arriving with all the answers.
It’s about people in Iowa and Tanzania working together—local schools, engineers, contractors, priests, religious sisters, volunteers and supporters—toward something every child deserves.
More than six decades after his ordination to the priesthood, Monsignor Frank Bognanno’s life has taken him from parish churches across Iowa to welcoming Pope John Paul II to our state, from surviving cancer to the summit of Kilimanjaro.
But one unexpected encounter at the bottom of that mountain created a legacy all its own.
A bishop told him children were getting sick.
Frank listened.
Then he decided to help.
And every time a child in Tanzania turns on a tap, fills a cup with clean water and returns to the classroom healthy, the promise continues.
$7 provides safe water for 1,000 students for a month.
