Clean Water for 1,500 People in Rural Senegal

CREATE! partners with rural communities in Senegal to improve their access to clean water in an environmentally sustainable way. This water in turn helps communities cultivate nutritious vegetables year round, thus improving their food security and health outcomes. With the generous support from donors like you, the community of Boustane Lo in the Fatick region of Senegal partnered with CREATE! in late 2019 to achieve these same goals. The project started with the rehabilitation of an existing deep well of proven capacity in the rural community and the installation of a solar powered water pumping system that pumps water out from the well to a storage reservoir. With this water and the gravity fed and drip irrigation system installed in their garden site, the community now has means to successfully cultivate vegetables all year round.

By the beginning of the year 2020, Boustane Lo had already started producing six varieties of fruits and vegetables including eggplants, tomatoes, peppers and lettuce. All of these vegetables are a part of the Senegalese diet and used in the preparation of national dishes like Ceebu jen. But then in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country and its rural communities hard. To safeguard the country from the virus, the Government imposed travel restrictions and a curfew that prevented people from travelling to the different counties within the country. The curfew slowed down and stopped activities such as weekly village markets, an extremely important aspect of Senegalese life. Water scarcity in the rural regions of the country also made recommended hygiene practices to prevent the spread of the virus difficult to follow. Now, more than ever, these communities needed projects such as solar-powered water pumping systems to access clean water for drinking, gardening and sanitation practices as well as community gardening to put food on the table for their families.

For a community like Boustane Lo, not working in the face of the pandemic was not an option since their work is what helps them survive. CREATE!s Senegal staff worked hard with the community members to ensure their safety and well-being. To help them keep working while remaining safe, CREATE! held awareness training on all safety measures and suggested that the community members work separately with distances of at least two meters (6 ft), while wearing masks. With the help of generous donations from our supporters like you, CREATE! piloted a hand washing and sanitation station in Boustane Lo garden site and trained the members essential hygiene routines like washing hands often and disinfecting. The hand-washing station is providing the community members with clean running water to wash their hands after working in the fields. This water is coming from the rehabilitated well in the community and is reassuring the beneficiaries to carry out their activities maintaining proper hygiene.

Although activities have slowed down in the community and the curfew is restricting movement, the people continue to work in the garden site and produce vegetables. With the markets closed, the vegetables from the garden are sometimes their only source of food. The CREATE! gardens have also, in this time of need, become a temporary market for the nearby villages. CREATE!s water and community garden programs have thus helped the community of Boustane Lo, and the other partner communities adapt and survive the pandemic as best as they can.

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