In collaboration with Village Water, we launched 2 new safe water projects in Mozambique and Zambia at the beginning of 2020.
The projects were both quite ambitious: in Mozambique the plan was to repair 800 boreholes and in Zambia another batch of 200 by the end of 2020.
We have done our best to reach the goal, and despite the coronavirus pandemic making our goal harder to reach, we have managed to deliver very good results with the final push expecting to be completed in Q1 2021. In particular, huge praise goes to Village Water and their in-country teams who never stopped their hard work on the ground, working safely even during the peak of the virus, when little was known, and the entire world was in total panic.
Early on, the field teams set up anti-Covid 19 campaigns to combat the virus on the ground and limit its spread among the communities: the already existing WASH campaigns have been improved by focusing more on hygiene promotion, provision of hand-washing facilities with soap in key community areas; such as in proximity to boreholes or health centres. The campaigns were carried out with training delivered to small groups, but also through radio promotion, with vehicles mounted with loud-hailers, posters, and leaflet distribution to reach as many people as possible (read more about this here Village Water).
And now, as we come to the end of this challenging 2020, we can do a final review of what has been achieved so far:
We are very proud and satisfied with what we have managed to achieve this year, but the programme is far from concluded. All our safe water carbon projects have a duration of a minimum of 5 years. For the full length of the project, alongside borehole rehabilitation, we also organise regular WASH trainings for the local communities, training on well maintenance, regular water quality testing to assess if it’s safe for human consumption and last but not least, our projects are gender sensitive; intended to ensure representativeness and inclusiveness of women in the decision making of the programmes.
We are delighted to work with Village Water and their partners and are thankful for their continued fantastic work and support: their initiatives, approach and strategies have ensured the projects remained on track, whilst simultaneously committing to reducing the spread of COVID-19.
We are looking forward to see what 2021 has in store!