The Global Women’s
Water Initiative Team has been traveling through East Africa to visit the women
teams that were trained in our 2011-2012 year long training program. Meet the people whose lives they are
changing.
GWWI Team - Gemma
Bulos, Director; Rose Wamalwa, Kenya/Tanzania Field Coordinator; Comfort
Mukasa, Uganda Field Coordinator
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| Sophia, grandmother of 33 is elected as the Chairperson for the Water Tank Committee |
Sophia lives in Odesso, Nyamasaria a slum in Kisumu, Kenya,
where the main source of water is a contaminated river that runs alongside her
community. Everyday you’ll see people fetching water, bathing, washing clothes,
dishes and motorbikes, with animals using the water alongside.
In the past year, she had been participating in a program
conducted by Kisumu Medical Education Trust (KMET) who facilitated a planning
process whereby her community was able to identify their most pressing needs –
which they concluded was access to water. When GWWI Graduates Rosemary and Joy
of KMET returned from the GWWI training in Kampala in July 2011, they went to
Sophia’s community to offer a WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) seminar in
her community and introduced the rainwater harvesting system (RWH) with storage
tank. Sophia jumped at the chance to participate in the seminar as well as the
construction to learn how to build the system. As a grandmother with 33
grandchildren, she knew that it was important to have this knowledge to ensure
that they have a hopeful future.
KMETs mission emerged from the Founder’s desire to address
maternal mortality in her community. It has since evolved into the provision of
health and social services in 45 communities. As a result as of the GWWI
training, Rosemary and Joy are determined to integrate WASH education and
technologies into KMETs mission, which they believe is a cross-cutting issue
that is crucial for KMET to meet all their community health goals.
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| A Water Tank committee was formed consisting of all women! |
Rosemary and Joy trained the Odessa RWH team alongside GWWI
Training partner Connect Africa. They built their tank in 5 days where the
women made their own bricks, laid the foundation, and built the tank. A water
committee was formed to maintain and manage the system and Sophia was elected
as the Chair. The committee now sells the water at a discount price to the
community. Normally water is sold at 10KSH ($.12US) per 5 gallons and the
Odessa Water Committee sells it for 3KSH ($.04US). The money earned is given to
widows and orphans to pay their school fees and uniforms.
In the past year, Sophia has seen more houses being built
around her community because they want to be closer to the water tank so they
don’t have to use the river water. Sophia is so grateful because her family no
longer gets sick and she has not heard of anyone getting sick who has purchased
the water.
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| Powerful partnership between KMET, Water Tank Committee and GWWI! |
Save the DATE: Join us on Oct 25, 2012 at the David Brower
Center for the Global Women’s Water Initiative Report Back! More info to
follow…
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