Clean water shallow-well and rope-pump for Titye Secondary School

This project will bring water to Titye Secondary school in western Tanzania. Currently, the 486 students and more than 1200 people living nearby need to fetch their water from a stream 2.3 km away. Walking to and from the stream and queuing for water can take over two hours a day.

This is a self-help scheme. The local community members provide most of the labour, but as they lack the cash for materials and equipment hire, we will cover the cost. The technology (shallow wells with rope hand pumps) is low-cost, simple, and easy to maintain, and there is a proven local project management system run by a local representative who lives nearby, Benedicto Hosea, and his youth organisation MVG (Eyes of the Youth).

Challenge

Access to water is a huge issue in many villages in Tanzania, meaning people (usually women) spend many hours a day carrying it many miles, often from dirty ponds shared with animals. As well as wasting many hours a day on this, a negative impact on their educational achievement and income, and putting girls at risk of attack when they are walking home alone, using such dirty water has many health implications.

Solution

A local representative, Benedicto Hosea, who has lived in this area all his life, has perfected a technique whereby local youth use simple equipment to hand drill down to the water table over several days and then install a rope pump they have made themselves. This means the pump can be maintained by the villagers.

Impact

Bringing water to Titye will allow girls to spend much more time on their studies, and so improve their educational performance and long term prospects. It will also enable local women to improve their farms and start small businesses with the time they will save. It will also have long term positive impacts on the health of over 1200 people, particularly children who are currently at particular risk of water-borne diseases.