Situation

Students and teachers at Ttama (TAH-ma) Primary School walk a kilometer to the nearest borehole to collect water. Once they arrive, they wait 1-2 hours to fill their single containers of water (20 liters) and then have to haul it back to school. This means that they miss class and education is greatly affected. There is never water for drinking, only boiling some small porridge for lunch for the children. Little water at school also means hygiene facilities are non-existent, there is no handwashing and girls and women cannot wash themselves as they face their monthly female cycles. 

Solution

There is no cookie-cutter approach to solving water access issues, so our partner Drink Local Drink Tap carefully determined the best solution for water access with this school and surrounding community. After careful planning, community meetings, and working with the newly formed ‘water user committee’ (WUC), our partner conducted a hydrogeological survey and determined that drilling a deep borehole to access more sustainable,clean groundwater is the best solution.