Help a Child: Provide Access to Water in Nigeria

Dear Friends, Family and supporters of Serendipity,

A lot has happened since our last update on how we want to provide access to water in our communities. Remember we said we put out a call for tenders and we got a successful contractor Mai Hali Nig Ltd to provide drilling services for our goal to provide access to water? Well we have signed the contract for the punching and casing of 15 new hand pumps and rehabilitation of 5 hand pumps that have stopped working in some of the communities that our data Enumerators in their entry to the communities found out had stopped for over a year now due to poor installing and bad equipment used  by other service providers. Mai Hali was chosen because of their technical and financial capacity to get the job done.

We also conducted a geophysical and hydrogeological survey with results showing basement rock formation composed of gneisses and granites with an aquifer target present from 30-37 meters’ depth and a calculated borehole depth of 37-65 meters to get a hand pump that will last for 10 – 15 years. A vertical electrical sounding was conducted for the survey.

The rains have stopped, although this year it came with a lot of damage and flooded so many communities in Northern Nigeria, destroying the crop farms, poultry and livestock with loss of human lives, we on our own small part as a humanitarian organization are providing relief materials for the displaced. Jigawa which is a neighboring state is the worst hit on this climate change issue that affected communities in Northern Nigeria.

The contract we signed is based on batches of five and the first batch signed is for five hand pumps in Sumaila and Bebeji Local Governing councils in Kano and the next batch will be for another five hand pumps and so on until we complete the fifteen before the year runs out. That will be a beautiful end of year gift, don’t you think? The contractor moved to site two weeks ago and our program coordinator who is schooled in borehole drilling was there to supervise them. We have thus far drilled 8 hand pumps as at the time of this report (two in Sumaila, two in Gezawa, two in Kumbotso and two in Ungogo. We have seven more to go before the end of the year 2022.

Our Data Enumerators went into 20 communities in 9 Local Governing Councils in Kano and the software used to collate this data was Kobo Collect an online free software to gather information and data on WASH Practices, the type of water sources they have and currently use, sanitation facilities et al. The information was gotten from households, primary healthcare centers and primary schools. 60% of the respondents were women and girls and 0% of them have the knowledge of hand washing practices and when to use it while 20% are not aware of good handwashing practices. 30% of the men are aware of handwashing practices but hardly use this knowledge to teach it to their families rather only associate handwashing to only when they want to perform prayers.

80% of the communities do not have access to safe clean drinking water and thus rely on streams and ponds as their source of water with 20% of the communities having only one hand pump in the community that serves over 700 persons in the communities. Information gathered will inform the direction of our programs for the coming year.

See work we have done thus far in our links and pictures.

All of this is possible because of your support and kind donation and upon completion direct beneficiaries will be 1,500,000 persons while indirect beneficiaries will be 3,000,000 persons.

Follow our stories on our social media handles to be updated as we go along on Facebook/serenhealthcare, Instagram/serendipityHea1, Twitter/serendipityHea1 or our website on Https://www.serendipityhealthcare.org.in

Thank you so much for your continued support as we want every child to have access to water.

Your faithfully,

Samirah Faruk

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