Imagine two peri-urban villages located in the tropics with lots of rainfall and plenty of underground fresh water reserves, yet its people depend on polluted river water for all domestic purposes including drinking. Two neighboring villages of Chikuni and Ndodani are typical examples of villages surrounding Lilongwe City- Malawi's Capital- where women and girls wake up early in the morning to queue or walk long distances of more than 4km in search of water resources.
Chikuni and Ndodani Villages lie in the outskirts of Lilongwe City whereby there is lack of a clear-cut demarcation in terms of development mandate for organizations targeting Lilongwe City or Lilongwe Rural. Organization operating in Lilongwe City consider the two villages to be within the jurisdiction of Lilongwe Rural while those operating in Lilongwe Rural regard those villages to be under Lilongwe City. In this way, these villages have been neglected as far as water projects are concerned.
The requested grant will be used to: 1) drill two boreholes and repair one broken-down borehole; 2) improve sanitation around the borehole sites by constructing good drainage systems; and 3) set up a revolving fund for borehole repairs/maintenance. Drilling 2 boreholes- one in each village- and repairing an old abandoned borehole will improve people's health (400 women, 200 men and 400 children), reduce their time-burden, and re-allocate labour to most productive activities e.g agriculture
Easing access to clean water will facilitate reduction/prevention of water borne diseases and ultimately empower women economically as they will spend less time fetching for water. The prospects for self-employment are high as over 400 women will enjoy a good bill of health, create enough time to manage their entrepreneurial activities because they will spend less time fetching for water from faraway places (4 km), and girls will concentrate on their education.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
